


Attuned

by Ringtail



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Magical Realism, Novel, Other, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-02-04 19:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18610990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ringtail/pseuds/Ringtail
Summary: Ladron Gadai, A sophomore at the prestigious Curtis Institue of Music, couldn't possibly love anything more than music, and that included his family and friends. There were few things he wouldn't sacrifice for the sake of making music that he was satisfied with, but there's always stones in the path of every creative mind, and the next rock in Ladron's road sends him careening down a rabbit-hole that he'd been dancing around his entire life.Join Ladron in his to understand the true beauty and magic of music as he tries to balance work, school, and maintaining half a social life all while trying not to blow up any more pigeons.





	1. Trip Tracks

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Attuned, I will be your introductory guide guy. This is my first non-fanfiction piece of work, so critiques are appreciated, and as I only have one editor, we miss things. Not too many, but it can still make a difference, so please; feel free to leave a comment with the sentence that the error is in, such as:
> 
> "Blah blah blah, blah blah. Blah blah bahl. Doodle smith blah blah"
> 
> Comment: Hey queer, you messed up here -> 'Blah blah bahl.'
> 
> That being said, I've been writing for a little while now, but I'm not quite set in my ways. Advice and tips are always welcome.
> 
> As Always, ❅Stay Cool, Kids.❅

Chapter One: Trip Tracks

  
  
  


Driving sucks, and most people my age will probably say something similar if they got their license at eighteen like myself. I didn’t want to learn how to drive, but I did it because you can’t really go anywhere in Ohio without knowing how to vroom. I also did it because I couldn't get a girl without a car, though getting Lisa, my ‘01 Century, didn’t friggin’ help at all. Sure, she got me from A to B for thirty bucks an hour, but chick magnet she was not. Then again, my driving situation doesn’t matter at all. The only reason I even mention it is because the drive from Troy, Ohio to Philly is murderous without a Shotgun. Yeah, I had my ‘Troy to Philly’ playlist going the entire way, but even that just wasn’t sitting well with me, and that’s pretty unusual. Music does soothe the dorkly beast in my book, but for some reason the deeper I got into my playlist, the less I felt like listening to it, and the weirder my tastes started getting. 

 

Me being me, I didn’t browse too much while driving since that crap can be pretty lethal, but when I hit the west border of my home-state, I took a few minutes to stretch my legs and surf Spotify, but  _ Delta Sleep _ still hadn’t come out with anything new,  _ Aesop Rock _ was getting to be a little mediocre, and I’ve heard everything  _ Frank Sinatra’s  _ ever put out two or three times. Shit was just old and I wasn’t really in the mood to let Pandora and its screwy algorithm mess with my music experience, so I dove into Soundcloud and checked out some stuff from the Curtis Group just to see if anyone had come up with anything over Fall Break. Surprise, surprise, no one other than Bryce and  _ Maegan _ (It’s not Megan, trust me.) had posted anything, and I generally hesitate to listen to Maegan’s teenybopper, sad-sack, acoustic nonsense since it’s really not intended for twenty-year-old dudes in college. There’s nothing wrong with the typical style she uses, I just lowkey don’t like Maegan, which would usually push me to listen to Bryce’s new tracks. If nothing else, they’d be interesting for a quick peek into the mind of the campus’ only open furry.

 

I didn’t even plug in to listen while I walked around the mostly empty rest-stop. It was pretty late into the afternoon with the sun already dipping below the horizon, which kinda creeped me out since I was alone in a place that looked like crystal meth was cooked nearby. Hell, for all I knew the derelict women’s restroom could have been the home of a lab, which really didn’t help the situation when I started thinking about it. It’s not that Bryce’s music was particularly unsettling for the most part, it was just his weird ‘Vaux Faker’ style songs that fucked with my head. The hearsay on the genre was that it’s based on frequencies beyond the human hearing range, at least as far as the ‘major’ artists went. I didn’t really know if it was true since I was one of the few people that heard pretty much any of the weird little messages in the songs brought to me, but there were supposed fakes that everyone could hear. VF would probably take off if it wasn’t such depressing, creepy, drawn-out, and on occasion, depraved music. Seriously.

 

There was a lot of hesitation in my thumb while I dillied and sometimes dallied with the prospect of endangering my possibly/probably fragile mental health more than I usually tend to. I mean, yeah, reading up on horror, watching it, and seeing mutilation on the internet were all mind-warping in their own little ways, but there was just something sickeningly demented about true Vaux Faker songs, which is why the people who listen to the crap are usually considered insane by the people who actually know what it is. Granted it was pretty obscure in my freshman year, but Bryce, as eclectic as he ever was, had already been knee deep in the scene. Him being cool-but-weird meant that a couple of the less weird people started getting into it around campus, and then him being gay was basically a free pass into half the female population of the school. Me being friends with other people that were kinda weird but more weird than ‘less weird’ in comparison to Bryce’s weirdness eventually lead to him showing me a couple of his overall favorite songs. The Vaux Faker one,  _ Shell of Soul _ , was just… Well, disturbing is a good word for it. When I’d first heard the song, I was a little into it since the bass had a driving force behind it, but then the absolutely  _ chilling _ melancholy and bone-jarring dread set in. It was like I’d suddenly dropped into  _ Srpski Film _ , completely aware of the fact that I was in said movie, and just happened to be one of the less lucky characters in the movie. Come to think of it, no one was lucky in that movie… 

 

Moving on.

 

As I was saying, I had the heeby-jeebies like even  _ I _ couldn’t believe, and Bryce was fine and dandy like he’d just gotten back from getting fro-yo, which he had. That was my initial encounter with the accursed collection of noises. My second and previously last run in was, oddly enough, near the tail end of Fall Break the year before. I couldn’t remember the song and probably wouldn’t have tried that hard, even if I wanted to. However, I still wanted to give the genre one last go since there technically wasn’t a type of music I didn’t or wouldn’t listen to, other than VF. I figured that Bryce’s unnecessarily friendly disposition and generally laid-back demeanor would mean that his music would be equally chill. About thirty or so seconds after hitting play on his song  _ Real Ambrose _ , I was proven horribly, terribly wrong. The shrill, banshee-like undertones and the crashing, syncopated beat just made my head hurt, and the lyrics…

 

I had to look up the posted lyrics because I wasn’t sure of what I’d heard, but the words had indeed been ‘ _ Fracture! Shatter! Break! Mend! Rip the fetus in half! Eat the brain; Begin again! _ ’, which was pretty much the mental image I was entreated to. That was enough to get me the hell out of dodge and back onto the road, wide awake and ready to get to my comfort philly cheesesteak in Pittsburgh. Yeah, I could have waited until I actually got to Philly to get my sandwich, but I was four hours into my drive and after the adrenaline died down I was  _ starving _ . Breakfast was good and all, but a man’s gotta eat, and that being nearly five hours behind me meant that I was ready for an all-American snack. Meal. Whatever.

 

I didn’t drive deep into Pittsburgh since it was friggin’ dark when I got there and I didn’t want to get steeled to death. That meant that I headed towards the ‘burbs and some of the lesser known local joints that some of the Pennsylvania natives on campus had been to. Nelly’s was my favorite place to get salisbury steak, but I was in the mood for some provolone and chopped steak since there really wasn’t anywhere to get one in Ohio that I knew of. A decent one, I should say. There were plenty of places that offered philly-style sandwiches and even a couple pizza places with their own philly-style pizzas, but nothing beats a hot, greasy, cheesy sammy on a brisk autumn night. Especially after you spook yourself with Devil music.

 

I got my sandwich and ate it at the late-night diner, chilling pretty hardcore while trying not to doze off. The fries definitely helped with that, the subsequent dryness of my lips enough to aggravate me all the way back Philadelphia County. Thankfully for me, I’m too broke to live in the dorms on campus and too rich to live on the dorms off campus, which both lowkey suck. Being middle class gave me no real scholarship opportunities and no real financial aid, but the partial ride I got to Curtis was good enough to pay for tuition, books, and most of the equipment I didn’t already have, so I considered myself lucky. Still had to pick up a job when I turned sixteen to fund my dreams, still had a part-time job waiting for me when I got back to Philly, but the steps I took to further my goals usually seemed worth it to me.

 

By the time I got back to The House, everyone had either gotten back themselves and were already passed out in their rooms or were already up and at their own jobs. BB (Bartimaeus Bones) worked the grave-shift at a gas station I’d never been to, so I wasn’t surprised to see that his Civic was gone. Shelly Gaul’s Malibu was exactly where I’d seen it the first time I’d met my housemates, and it had been some time since anyone had asked her if she was going to move it, and Ruddy Rodney’s stupidly jacked-up F-150 had seemingly driven fresh tracks through the rut he and his bastard truck had been building for a while. I wasn’t surprised to see that Marissa was over, and as I unpacked, I vaguely wondered whose room she was sleeping in on that particular night. It wasn’t really worth the iota of brainpower I devoted to it since I was the only one who wouldn’t sleep with her as far as The House goes. Yes, Shelly was bisexual, and yeah, it was totally hot, but no, I never took their invitations to watch seriously because I highly doubted that Kara would be half as okay with it as she said she was.

 

As my mind drifted to my melodramatic lover-lady, I unlocked the side door to the house so I could prop it open and unpack my car quietly. When I started getting my stuff inside, the only things I left behind were a couple of new knives that Dust had bought for me, including the ‘Dust’ painted karambit-balisong that depicted the map from COD: Modern Warfare 2. I probably shouldn’t have left it in my car in all honesty, but I had a few more to go along with it, and my Ohio mind wasn’t exactly used to Philly knife laws. That being said, Kara usually reminded me to leave my autos and spring-assists at home, but I still usually took a little pen knife or something with me to school so I could whittle on lunch if I needed inspiration for a song. I’m not a psycho, but I do have a small knife fetish.

 

Once I got everything back in my room, I crashed on my bed, thankful for the reasonable size of the room, granted where it was located. It was honestly bigger than the room my brother lent me for my stay at his house, and it was a little colder as well, perfect for literally and figuratively chilling. So much so that my _Super Deep Chill_ playlist made its way into the moment, starting with the entirety of _Bonobo’s_ _Black Sands_ album. By the time it moved on to some of Emancipator’s work, I was ready to close and my eyes. I can’t say I was really annoyed when Logan, the House Dad-Guy-Person, came in just a few seconds after I’d gotten my eyes closed. Irritated was closer to the mark, but the guy was generally so hopped up on caffeine that it wasn’t worth saying anything off color to him, just in case he got into one of his old-people rambly moods.

 

When he peeked into my room with his manic little eyes, he gave me a grin in the low dawn light. “Hey there, champ, you just get back?”

 

I suppressed a yawn, politeness driving me to answer. “Yeah, about an hour ago. What’s up, Low-Lo?”

 

The stocky fellow let out a few of his odd little chuckles, more wheezy than laughy. “Ah, that nickname’s not going away until you graduate, is it?”

 

I cracked a smile. “Aww, c’mon, you know you love it, old man. Anyone pull anything stupid while I was away?”

 

“Nope, but we got a party comin’ Sunday, and you’re not invited until you let me hear that secret project of yours.”

 

“Bluffing is bullcrap and you know it, man!” I chuckled, not taking his threat seriously.

 

“I mean it this time, La-Loner, you can’t get away with staying cooped up in your room half the day and start prowling around at night. I’ll be up to niggle and nag at you now that I’m working second.”

 

“Ooh, that’s rough. Looks like I’ll be shifting my schedule around to avoid you a little longer.” 

 

“Little bastard!”

 

“I’m bigger than you, gramps. Speaking of, who’s Kisser with tonight?”

 

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it, but she ended up with Ruddy. Apparently, his girl left him.”

 

“Weird, but not unexpected. I wonder if she’s passing anything around yet.”

 

“She says she just likes the vibe here, but you never know what she does in her own time.”

 

“True. Here’s to Marissa and her selectively promiscuous ways.”

 

“Here, here. I’m almost surprised she hasn’t come after my young, handsome self.”

 

I propped myself up to give Logan’s silhouette a more obvious once over. “If you had more hair and didn’t happen to be built like a fridge box…”

 

“Aww, now you can go right to Werther’s class if you want to say crap like that!”

 

“Wow, that’s a little rough, isn’t it?” 

 

“What, Binary Theory not your thing?”

 

“Why are you even up right now? What time is it?”

 

“It’s a little after seven, I thought you knew the time?”

 

“No, I just knew I didn’t get home too long ago. Is there something you actually wanted, or just someone to talk to for a sec?” 

 

“Won’t complain for some company,” Logan shrugged.

 

I smirked, though I doubted he could see it in the low light. “Grab me a cup of that old McNasty and we’ll talk.”

 

“Reminds me of the fact that the coffee’s actually been drinkable straight out of the pot while you’ve been gone.”

 

“Double Redeye or I must die,” I replied easily.

 

“Caff-fiend,” he snorted.

 

“I don’t hear coffee being poured.”

 

“Get up and make it yourself, kid. And don’t touch my booze!” He stepped out of the doorway, leaving it cracked.

 

“I don’t drink!” I called back, though it was still at conversation volume as to not wake anyone else up on the weekend.

 

It took me a few seconds to get up again, more than just a little weary from the drive. One small bathroom break saw me in the kitchen with a hand-pressed cup of mud, perfectly deadly and positively slightly disgusting. Don’t get me wrong, I like my coffee, it’s just that everyone always skimps unless I buy it, and when I do, I have to keep it in my car unless I want it all to be gone in a day. Good coffee is worth the extra effort, especially since the good stuff’s the only stuff worth drinking half the time. As far as I’m concerned, if you can get a gallon of it retail, then I wasn’t too concerned with its quality. I suppose you could say I was every bit as picky with my coffee as I was with my circle of friends.

 

After a couple of hours catching up with Logan, I took my happy ass to bed and slept well into the afternoon where I got a shower, shave, and a start to my day. Logan wasn’t lying when he said I spent most of my time cooped up in my room working on projects, but it was all for a good reason. I mean, I had a public Soundcloud that did well enough with some of the side-works I put out. It was under my real name, so no one suspected a connection between myself and my very own alter ego, _Zephyr_. I usually posted school projects on my Soundcloud, or stuff that wasn’t good enough for my albums or EP’s. Ladron Gadai had five hundred followers for his collection of odds and ends, but Zephyr had a few hundreds of _thousands_ looking after their work, and I’d been up to my usual business over break in between nonsense and partying. _Vexed,_ _Hiccup,_ and _Blast Off/Launch Date_ were all worthy to go on _My Brother’s Keeper_ , the second EP I intended on putting out as Zephyr, but _Criminy_ was too ‘Electronica’ for the predominantly Lo-Fi EP, so I posted it to my main page. _Path to Penance_ was as close to complete as I felt like getting it, so I posted both the EP and the LP and stretched my style a little to see what the response would be. PTP was supposed to be more of a Chillstep kind of album, but I had fans of the genre from what I’d already posted, and at the very least _I_ felt I was staying true to myself in my music. Countless douches loved to say that I’d sold out even without having a record contract or anything, but those few haters get drowned out by the fans who generally support the variety of stuff I put out, even if I stray from their personal tastes from time to time. 

 

As I got to work, I laid out the foundation for a new song by creating a basic beat and wondered what my inspiration, my muse, would be for the song before it hit me; the dissonance between creating content for yourself and doing it because you have to. For the first half of the song, I tried to use gentler, more ambient sounds that blended together well, the harmonies and cadences doing pretty alright by my book. For the latter couple of minutes, I threw together some crap I really didn’t feel like mixing and it sounded digestible, but not quite right, which was where I wanted the song to sit on someone’s mind. It took me a good portion of the night to fine-tune and blend the fair-use vocals into the right pitches so nothing would spike or valley too noticeably. I honestly considered naming the song  _ Montana  _ after  _ Hannah Montana _ , but it seemed really, really stupid at the moment. Thus, I named the song what I thought about naming it because taking yourself too seriously is a crime against your childhood.

 

Once I got it made up, I thought about the possible genres it’d fit into. Nu Jazz, Lo-Fi, and Nu Lounge were all contenders, but I rarely gave my music actual labels. If people wanted to call it something or other then that was fine, though I really just don’t give a rat’s tail as long as it sounds right and plays right. The only thing was that when I played  _ Montana  _ back, I heard lyrics in the song that I hadn’t put there. They were quiet when I first heard them, and I couldn’t pick it up from playing over that part of the song. It had to be from the beginning, or I wouldn’t hear the telltale ‘ding’ that started the hidden verse. It was still hard to hear on my fourth listen, but I could kinda make out ‘Fear not the sound; Fear in the ground’, which made no sense in or out of context. The vocals in the song were semi-chopped, and listening to them alone didn’t have the same ‘ding’ as when they were combined with the melody. It was confusing, but I was still tired from my drive and a little ambivalent since I was sure that I was hearing things. I mean, I could only hear the words every so often, and they weren’t disturbing. The song itself was a little wacky outside of the hidden message, but nothing too weird. I almost added it to my ‘To Be Posted’ folder, but something made me wonder if that was the right choice. It wasn’t my best work and it wasn’t really something I’d replicate in the future, so it went to my ‘Reject’ folder instead.

 

Being a good student and all, I didn’t have any work to get caught up on, and being mostly introverted meant that I felt no obligation to see if anyone wanted to do anything. There were still a few texts to be sent out just to let people know I was alive and whatnot, but everybody who knew me was well aware of the fact that I was probably doing something with music if I wasn’t online. Hell, even Kara had a general idea of when I wanted to be left alone, and that was without her even having to contact me. I honestly had it pretty good in life, all things considered. Good, affordable coffee courtesy of Shelly’s job (And discount) at Earth Fare, a spacious, quiet room to make music, a great circle of dope friends, and a beautiful, loving girlfriend who would never cheat on me. Yeah, I was drinking in the ambient awesome that was in the air Saturday night up until Kara sent me a couple of pictures on Snapchat. A lesser man would have been upset at the sight of his girlfriend ‘performing’ for a group of frat guys, but not me. I just went with CPA (Contingency Plan A) and texted Shelly to fill her in and ask for a favor.

 

Shelly told me to go to her room since she wasn’t home at the moment, the time being around eleven-fifteen in the evening. Still in some home-clothes, I chilled out on her bed until she got back, but I barely had time to say, “Hi.”

 

“So is Kara still sending you those snaps?” Shelly asked, getting down to brass tacks, true to form.

 

I checked my phone, the last several snaps still available. “Just got another video.”

 

“Have you screenshotted anything yet?” 

 

I blinked. “Wouldn’t she know if I did?”

 

“Yes, which is why it’s good that you didn’t. Download a screen recorder,” She barked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I chuckled.

 

“Ooh, I kinda like that. Call me ma’am from now on.”

 

“Whatever, Shells. Why am I recording Kara being a hoebag?”

“Because you’re an old white soldier boy with no swag, and if you don’t record it, you have no gonads.”

 

“Keep stealing raps and we might have beef, ma’am.” I rolled my eyes, searching my app marketplace for choice for a decent recorder. Once I had it, Shelly did the deed so I could claim innocence, and she even sent Kara a smile to go along with the charade. 

 

I was about to take my phone back when Shelly pulled a move I wasn’t expecting, grabbing me by the shoulder and bringing me in for a kiss with a bumpy, wet surprise inside. The flash on my camera went off, I tried to think about how I was feeling at the moment, and Shelly was sending the snap to Kara. She handed my phone back to me and I stared at it for all of two seconds before it got snatched out of my hands again, courtesy of Shelly and her ‘take charge’ personality. There was no point in asking what she was doing while she had her She-Devil face on, so I took a moment to see if Shelly’d done anything to her hair. It never stayed the same color long, and at the moment it was silvery at the roots, fading to a nice purple. Her long locks framed her face, the light of my phone screen reflecting off of the Coke-bottle glasses she wore, despite being able to see reasonably well without them.

 

There wasn’t enough time for me to ruminate on Shelly further since she thrust my phone back at me and asked, “So does this mean you’re open to that little offer?”

 

I blinked a couple times before I took it back, a little taken aback. “You mean… With Marissa?”

 

“Yeah, we both get off on being watched, but it has to be the right audience, you know?” Shelly said, giving me a shit-eating grin.

 

“If I say yes, you two are probably gonna try and molest my pickle.”

 

“It’s more like a gherkin, La-La.”

 

“And your chest has a couple of mosquito bites, but you insist on calling them ‘breasts’.”

 

“Oh my god, you fucking boob! I don’t call my tits ‘breasts’, and they’re big enough to catch an eye!”

 

“Where’d my tissues go again?”

 

“You prick! I just helped you and offered to show you a good time and this is how you repay me!?” 

 

I gave her a cheesy grin. “I already have your next two essays written out.”

 

That made her crack a smile. “See? This why I’m  _ serious _ when I ask if you want to watch, dude! Like, you are  _ that guy  _ though!”

 

“Watch it, Hot Teriyaki, I might take you up on it some time,” I lied.

 

“No you won’t,” Shelly deadpanned.

 

I rubbed my cheek. “Damn, I didn’t think you were actually for-realiously being seriously serious.”

 

“One thing you  _ severely  _ need to learn about the fairer, better sex is that we don’t take our kinks lightly.” She thumbed her nose and sniffed like she was telling me hard facts.

 

Honestly tempted to give her a look, I held back and just said, “You take your intercourse more seriously that your coursework.”

 

“ _ Who even says intercourse!? _ ” Shelly groaned.

 

“I might have a Y chromosome, but that doesn’t mean I’m immediately a horndog, Shells.”

 

“God, I swear you’re asexual.”

 

“I am.”

 

“... You know, that’s probably why Kara pulled this shit with you. Wouldn’t have done it like that, but a woman needs what she needs, dude.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, did you already watch all the crap from Snapchat, or is it gone?”

 

“Screen recorder,  _ duh. _ How do you get like, perfect grades again?”

 

“I’m nailing Dean Hotly,” I answered, using my most serious tone.

 

“Bullshit!” Shelly laughed. “You wouldn’t know what to do with Hartley’s _hands_ , let alone anything else on that woman.”

 

I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Why do you think you know my sex life?”

 

“Um, because I make you tell me about it and all Kara does in the group chat is bitch about your limp brat.”

 

I shrugged. “If I cared more about getting laid-”

 

“You care more about making music than you do getting laid,” She scoffed.

 

“And your point?”

 

“Dude! My  _ guy! _ It’s  _ college! _ ”

 

“I know I sound like a dork beyond lameness in words, but I really couldn’t give a shit less about dipping my dick into some drunk chick’s sketchy nethers when I could be at home, making music that you don’t need an erection to enjoy.”

 

Shelly shook her head at me and I rolled my eyes. “Ladron, you have got to be like, the most boring guy I’ve ever met. Like, you have  _ no  _ star quality about you. Seriously, who turns down the alternative to the ‘I wanna watch’ joke!?”

 

As we looked at each other, she dropped her mock disbelief when she saw that I wasn’t phased. “I do. It’s nothing against you or Marissa. In fact, I’ll probably take you up on it now that Kara won’t have a justifiable reason to jump my rump about it. If anything then just to see what all the fuss is about.”

 

“Wow. Sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

 

“You’re too old to be a girl.”

 

“Look here you lil’ shit,” She started, stopping because I was snickering at her already. “Alright, keep laughing! See how hard you’re laughing when the sores show up on your lip.”

 

That killed my buzz pretty quick. “Knowing Marissa, that’s not funny.”

 

“ _ I’m telling her you said that! _ ” Shelly gasped, slapping my arm.

 

I tilted my head. “Do you think she’d really care?”

 

“Uh,  _ yeah! _ You know she polyamorous, not just some slut!”

 

“Sleeping with multiple people ups your chances for the clap and its pals. That’s just hard facts on brioche right there.”

 

“Okay, you know I’ve slept with like, twenty dudes.” I shrugged and she continued. “What? You think I’m a slut too?”

 

“From what I’ve seen, no. I haven’t seen or heard of you bringing multiple people over for sex, or taking a partner over somewhere else to get action. I haven’t walked in on you blowing Ruddy or BB while their girlfriends are in the living room. You don’t do slutty stuff to get called slutty, as far as I’m concerned.”

 

She nodded. “Damn straight, but you know slut-shaming-”

 

“Is morally wrong, something blah-blah, women empowered through sex but men are pigs because of it,  _ whatever. _ ”

 

A finger was pointed in my direction and then dropped. “You know, I never really thought about that last part. What’s up with that empowerment through sex thing?”

 

“... Why the frick my peepee hard?” I offered by way of response.

 

“No it’s not, your nose isn’t red.”

 

“... I’m not even going to ask. In fact, I’m gonna just-”

 

“When you have a woody, your nose gets red for some odd reason.”

 

I nodded. “Thank you, Michelle. I… I did not know that, nor did I know I needed to.”

 

“Oh, you didn’t, but you were talking about bullcrap and I figured I’d reply with your, what were they called? ‘Hard facts on brioche’?”

 

“Aww, you can’t use my own words against me!”

 

“Can, will, have, and done. Now you can either put on a striptease and let me get a video, or you can get lost, La-La. Favor completed and small-talk talked.”

 

“I mean, I was just going to skim over the kiss, but if you wanna bring it up-”

 

“I don’t like Kara and you’re a sweetheart most of the time. Like a piece of forbidden, limp fruit.” She narrowed her eyes at me.

 

I nodded, my cheeks flushing. “Right. I’m going to pick Option B and see you later.”

 

“Ta-ta, La-la!”

 

“Ew.” I gave her a quick hug for the little favor and went back to my own room, satisfied in, my steps to sweet, chilly revenge. 

 

It took a moment to let the shock of being single wear off so I could be properly miserable about my angel being the centerfold. Not for the sake of dramatic irony or anything, but I played  _ Centerfold _ by the  _ J. Geils Band _ and it made me feel a little better. Not because of the irony. Definitely not. Okay, maybe a little, but I was honestly just surprised as I watched through the snaps Shelly had recorded in my stead. They were… Well, the first few videos were just eye-opening, but there were a few included where she was performing…  _ Services _ , that one generally doesn’t perform on two men at the same time. I’ve heard of vindictive people doing similar things, but on a much smaller scale and generally in passing about a distant relative or a friend of a friend. It’s different when it happens to you, and never had the feeling struck closer to home than during my third viewing.

 

I knew I was torturing myself, but it was like a tragic accident. I’d describe it as the same sickening feeling that drew me back to Vaux Faker during my drive, except there was no compulsion to hit the stop button. No fear or dread. Just an ache that could have hurt more in truth. Having never been one to dwell on the problems I know I can’t solve, it was an odd turn for me to keep watching Kara smile at the camera as guy after guy and the occasional girl drew and wrote on her. After the ninth time I watched everything, I got one last video from my recently denounced ex-girlfriend, and it was just as sickening as the entire event, if not more. I made sure to record it and send it back to her via text so she could see herself, and so that she would know that I had it forever. The flood of texts she sent me was full of anger and spite, but that made me happy. Being happy because someone else was upset made me sad until I reconsidered why Kara was mad. I didn't even have to spread the gif to mess with her, and there was always the fact that she’d sent them to me, thus making them my property.

 

Now, someone with fewer morals than me would have immediately posted the crap she sent me out of hurt and anger, but someone with patience would take the time to photoshop her face out of the pictures, blur her birthmarks, and then walk an hour to a rinky-dink pawnshop, buy a burner-phone in cash and post them from say, Mcdonald’s using their wifi. I can be a very patient person and a very diabolical one at that, so I carried out the footwork of my CPB (Contingency Plan B) overnight but held off on posting the pictures. I even left the burner in a plastic bag in a special little place I knew no one would look for it, and by Sunday proper Kara had stopped sending messages. 

 

I hadn’t been able to sleep all night, so I just spent the time making music, playing with different sounds until I made something that resembled a song. I called it  _ Somnus  _ and released as a single under my ‘pen name’, but listening to the song after I posted it bore odd results. I blamed it on being sleep deprived at the time, but I could decently make out ‘Dark’s as fast as light; Whispers causing fright; Fists of fury fight; Blood is shed tonight’, and then some mumbling that was unintelligible. I sent  _ Somnus  _ and  _ Montana  _ over to Bryce since he and Bodie, another friend of mine, were the only two people other than myself that I knew that could hear real VF lyrics. I didn’t bother sending it to Bodie since I knew his Farmer John, ‘It’s a fiddle, not a violin’ self would be happily asleep.  Bryce, however, was on Discord, so I sent him my stuff and he subsequently told me to listen to his three newest songs in order, back to back. One of them happened to be  _ Real Ambrose _ and I straight up told him that his song gave me a panic attack or something like it. Another odd thing to add onto my return to Curtis was Bryce telling me to ‘Get over it, puss’, which is something he’s  _ waaay  _ too nice to say to someone. Ever.

I’ll admit to being goaded by the furry; can’t lie. I almost made the playlist then and there to prove I wasn’t a kitty or the other half of the genitalia equation, but I could imagine a few hundred things I’d rather do than listen to VF for fun, and that included licking Kara clean after her little party. After almost managing to change the subject, Bryce roped me back onto the topic at hand and asked whether or not I’d meant to include hidden messages in my songs, which I hadn’t. I told him as much, to which he replied with; ‘Listen to the songs and I’ll explain everything after the break, fag.’, which was a floored gauntlet if I’d ever read one. It was nearly enough to make me do the thing without question since I can be a little fool-hardy when it comes to trash talk, but I just had to ask one last thing. When Bryce read my message, the typing indicator popped up and stayed steady for a minute or so before flashing off with no message attached to the action. The same thing happened a few times, my question still going unanswered. I’d only asked why/how I’d made VF songs by accident and when he finally replied, my own odd mongoose (Bryce’s Fursona) basically said, and I do paraphrase for politeness sake, ‘If you don’t know how you did it, then maybe you should stop making music.’, which was ludicrous from the very get-go.

 

As far as I was aware, everyone that spent more than a few days around me knew that I loved music more than I loved most of my extended family and even my closest friends. My Mom once grounded me from music for a week in my freshman year of high school and it only lasted a legendarily short twenty-six hours because I couldn’t calm down without Doris Day or Beirut at that point in time. Bryce had heard the story and I knew he remembered because he’d teased me about it before on numerous occasions, which just made his message that much more confusing. Hell, Bryce Ulbrich was one of the nicest people I knew, only ever really getting aggressive when he was playing something competitive. The guy wouldn’t really hurt a fly and saying mean crap for the sake of saying it wasn’t really in his wheelhouse, so I figured he was trying to taunt me into doing dumb shit for a good reason.

 

I told him to fuck off for being rude and got some cake after the party downstairs had died down. I mean, who am I to let peer pressure decide what I do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's not to say about this one other than welcome to the world of Attuned. We'll see where it goes from here, no?


	2. Prologue

_Attuned_

 

 

 

**Prologue**

 

Little in life goes as planned. Staying up and playing drinking games with his older brother Dustin and a few of his friends was not a part of the plan. Kissing Kendra Kohl was not a party of the plan. Puking on Kendra’s shoes shortly after said kiss was most certainly not a part of the plan. As Lady Luck would have it, Ladron simultaneously earned himself the title of ‘Lame Little Brother’, the lovely moniker ‘Dogcatcher’, and the ever-amusing nickname ‘Puke-it Sound’, all in the two drunken hours that he could barely remember. While nursing a hangover at Dustin’s apartment the morning before he was due to ship off for his second year at the Curtis Institute of Music, Ladron quietly contemplated suicide to avoid the worst of his hangover, but as with many of his friends, he couldn't find a good enough reason to follow through. That being said, the sheer blackness of the coffee he was sipping on may have darkened his mood in retrospect, but even as he stared blearily through his glasses at the motionless world around him, Ladron Gadai couldn’t help but feel the hype for his next semester of musical mastery. Nothing filled him with more pride than making or contributing to a good song, and a few of his tracks had even gained some popularity around the school. Of course, he was no John Wayne or Flamingosis with his beats quite yet. That didn’t stop him from shooting for the moon.

 

As Dustin poured himself a nice, tall glass of ice-cold hydration, also known as coconut water, the dark-haired, green-eyed fellow adjusted his glasses and tried to blink a piece of his brain away. Sadly, the only way to remove a piece of one’s brain without surgery was to take a politician's words at face value, and as Ladron sipped on his somewhat gross drink, he wondered if it would be worth it. That is, he wondered if it would be worth his time to apologize to his brother for embarrassing both him and himself. Dustin wasn’t the type to make a big deal out of it, but Ladron was the kind to dwell on mistakes whether big or small. Dustin picked up on his little brother’s awkward mood and kept the vibe bright by offering to make some coffee cakes like their great grandfather, Tom, used to make for them. Neither of them knew if cooking caffeine into pancakes actually worked as a pick me up, but Dustin knew that it was Ladron’s preferred comfort food.

 

“Yo, you going to schlump all day, or are you actually going to shit and git after breakfast?” Dustin asked lightheartedly.

 

Ladron recognized the olive sapling for what it was and cracked a small grin. “Make ‘em a triple Red-Eye and you’ll never see me stop moving, man. Mud water tastes better when you mix it with something.”

 

Dustin gave him a dubious look over his shoulder. “You know we _have to_ be the only people who still mix coffee into their actual food, right?”

 

“Ah, I’m calling bull! There’s coffee ice cream, cappuccino, and I heard Bobo’s just came out with an espresso flavor, so bam! Three foods with coffee.”

 

Ladron smiled cheesily as his brother rolled his eyes, thankful that the younger man had decided to not be mopey. “Those are all ice cream, and you know good and damn well that Mom doesn’t count ice cream as food.”

 

“Fine, then what about… Uh…” Ladron postulated for a moment. “Yeah, I got nothing besides sweets.”

 

“And you drench your pancakes in syrup too,” Dustin pointed out.

 

The younger brother flushed slightly, not exactly upset with the truth. “Who just eats plain bread!?”

 

“Plain, hot bread _hot_ bread. It’s the hot part that makes people enjoy it.”

 

“And being hot is why people enjoy me.”

 

Dustin flipped a flapjack before giving his brother the most ‘Are you actually being serious?’ kind of look he could muster. “Trust me, Casanova, it’s not because of the looks.”

 

Ladron clutched his chest. “Oh, how you have wounded me this day, brother! Hark! Tis the angels from on high I hear calling?”

 

“Shut the hell up and drink your coconut water, you nutball.” The eldest replied, reminiscing on days that weren’t worth his time.

 

“If it wasn’t chunky and made of whatever _Zero_ found in _Holes_ , then I might feel obliged.”

 

“Look here you little shit-” Dustin barked, holding back a laugh.

 

Before he could finish berating his brutally honest little brother, Maggie, Dustin’s girlfriend, scratched under her breast and rubbed her eyes, clearly exhausted from the previous night’s events. “I don’t know what makes y’all get up so early, but _damn!_ Can a woman get some sleep around here?”

 

“Maybe when I get some ass,” Dustin teased, accepting and returning Maggie’s morning kiss.

 

Magdalena took offense to the face Ladron pulled at the private display of affection. “You still here, scrimp? I thought you’d done took off already.”

 

The aspiring musician gave her a brash smile. “What, so eager to get rid of me?”

 

“I’m like eighty percent sure it was you an’ your high yellow ass that puked in the bathtub.”

 

“Nah, he got the lavender and Scott got the bluebells. Already hosed ‘em down.” Dustin said, swooping in for the save.

 

“ _My lavender!_ ” Maggie cried. “I swear to- to-”

 

“God?” Ladron offered.

 

“ _Boy!_ ”

 

“Seriously, I’d be more worried about the dump Ladron’s little ‘date’ took in the downstairs toilet.” Ladron looked at Dustin as he spoke and wondered if his older brother had in fact been machinating against him since birth.

 

Maggie was wearing a shimmering nylon robe that was barely tied, a Jimi Hendrix shirt, and something that was somewhere between booty shorts and boyshorts. She may as well have been wearing obsidian armor chased in the blood of her foes. Her weapon of choice was the nearest thing she could find, which happened to be her usual weapon; The Week-Ender. It was just a collection of newspapers that she’d glued together and padded with rubber bands, but it was the fact that it was so readily provided to her that made Ladron’s ears start ringing. He’d even thought to hide it earlier while Dustin wasn’t watching, but he’d missed his chance and was soon to pay for it.

 

“Hey now, at least I didn’t-” He began.

 

“Fool, give me one reason not to beat you til’ you pack up and ship off.”

 

“I didn’t do the thing you were originally mad about?”

 

“I use that lavender to make my own perfume.” She answered sharply.

 

“I thought you used it to make potpourri?” Dustin asked.

 

“Dude. My guy. Brother, why have you taken my loops?”

 

Maggie acted like she was a bunny with a ridiculous name and Ladron was a field mouse. She repeated her method acting just in case she ever needed to get into a play or something. At least that’s what she told people after hitting them. Once she’d worked out some frustration, Dustin chuckled and snickered to himself while Ladron groaned and grumbled, but all three got some breakfast. Oddly enough, they lined up from lightest to darkest and tallest to smallest from left to right simultaneously, with Ladron being the tallest and lightest and his brother being the smallest and darkest. As a charismatic and joy-seeking fellow would do, Dustin kicked off breakfast by making prayer fast and trying to smooth things out between his lover and his brother.

 

Needless to say, it didn't take long for the heat to die down and the bridge to be rebuilt, though Ladron did have to sacrifice his precious, invaluable sausage to Maggie. As the only red meat of breakfast for the morning, it was a tough loss, but he bore it well and took to his borrowed room. For a musician in the old days, getting gear together as well as all the people who were supposed to use it was nigh on impossible. However, in the digital era, Ladron had a backpack, duffel bag, and a single bassoon with accompanying case. The bassoon was easier to carry on his shoulder than his duffel-bag but other than ergonomics, there were more steps to Ladron’s prep phase that he felt were missing. It struck him just as he began pacing; he’d forgotten his packing playlist, and he still needed to hear _Dear Laughing Doubters_ as his breakfast ritual song. It seemed to help him digest better. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Either way, Ladron knew he’d have to plug the songs into his queue if he was to have a totally fine day.

 

After organizing his _Cayin N5iiS_ for the next couple of hours, Ladron began the process of stripping the room down of any personal effects and did so in impeccable time. Many teachers had long since learned that it was best to let Ladron drown out as much background noise as possible to keep him focused, and for the longest time his parents, teachers, and doctors thought it was tinnitus. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a case of schizoaffective bipolar disorder that was somehow quelled with the right music at the right time. Ladron lived his daily life as an average guy, just with a few secrets and oddities about him. However, the fact that he only needed to listen to an average of three songs out of any playlist was well known to those close to him, so Dustin gave him about fifteen minutes to clean and knocked on Ladron’s door. Packed and ready to head east to Philadelphia again, Ladron and Dustin loaded up the younger brother’s trusty Buick Century.

 

Just before he left, Dustin and Maggie came out to see Ladron off as he left the lovely little town of Troy, Ohio for bigger dreams in a bigger city. It was less ‘bittersweet goodbye’ and definitely more ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, see ya later’, though that was just how the brothers had always been. When Dustin himself had moved further north to attend a more apt trade school than the local ones, his departure had much the same tone and mood as Ladron’s. For a moment Dustin briefly wondered if any of his brother’s cited exploits were true, but ultimately decided that if they weren’t, then Ladron had a good enough reason to lie. If they were, then his little brother was lamer than an octoplegic spider. Seriously, indoor pool party where everyone just got their clothes wet? _And_ there was no alcohol? Yeah, Ladron might have been the ‘good’ son, but he was most certainly not the _interesting_ one, and Dustin smiled to himself as he took pride in that little fact.

 

The thing was that Ladron was actually hiding something from his brother, and even the somber, heavy melody of _4th of July_ by _Soundgarden_ couldn’t clear the guilt from his mind. It wasn’t that he’d lied to Dustin; no, that wasn’t quite the problem. It was that Maggie had an Adderall habit she’d never kicked from her days in MIT, and Ladron had caught her railing four of the little orange tablets before she settled in for an all-nighter, courtesy of her Computer Engineering degree. All it had taken to learn what she was doing was finding her stache and googling the most prominent ones. Ladron wasn’t the kind of guy to confront her about it directly, so he sent her a text when he knew that Dustin wasn’t around. There was no point in denying it, and Maggie wasn’t the type to lie. The only problem was that Dustin was notorious for condemning any substance outside of alcohol, dead-set on the evils of the Devil’s Lettuce and anything of the sort. If Ladron said anything, then Dustin would either kick his girlfriend out or get kicked out himself, as Maggie threatened. His conscience told him that he was betraying his brother by letting him live with an addict, especially one that could have violent tendencies while high. His head told him that he was making the right choice, and his heart hoped that Maggie followed through when she said that she’d get rid of her supply.

 

It was a long drive back to Philadelphia, and Ladron had plenty to think of while he rode the interstate. Not only did he have his brother’s lover to worry about, but his own love interest had also been sending him mixed messages and suggestive snaps that left him wondering if he actually had a shot. Kara Keller might not have been a model, but to Ladron she was the perfect woman. She loved and indulged in a few aspects of geek culture, could hold her own pretty well with most first-person-shooters and RPGs. In fact, she kicked his tail in LoL, WoW PvP, and sadly CS:GO. Little could be said on that matter other than that the guy lost to his girlfriend, which was all his friends needed to say to embarrass him. In fact, it was so frequent that it got brought up in gatherings that Ladron made a point to remember the three people who never said anything about it. Brianna was nice enough most of the time, Don was a complete stoner and therefore was usually pleasant to be around, but Bryce? Bryce was weird. He was also the token gay friend, but he didn’t flaunt his sexuality, and being gay wasn’t what anyone considered weird about him.

 

No, Bryce was a _furry_.

 

He’d never even seen one in person until he met Bryce, but from the moment Ladron laid eyes on his neon green and blue striped tail, he knew he was in for a trip. It didn’t help that Bryce was into incredibly obscure crunkcore, vaporwave, and harsh noise, which were all arguably just sounds that technically count as songs to Ladron. It wasn’t that the guy was the kind of weird that made people actively avoid him, there was just something off that no one could ever put their finger on. Besides the whole ‘furry’ thing. And in all honesty, Ladron didn’t think that fursuits were that weird. He considered it to be extreme cosplay since Bryce, the only one he knew, was incredibly casual about his fursona and rarely ever went full-garb. However, that didn’t stop Ladron from wondering just what kind of… _Compulsion_ would make someone want to forego their humanity for a fur-laden alter-ego. It wasn’t something he thought about for a long time, but it was still an oddity he wanted to figure out one day.

 

Beyond Bryce and his quirks, there was the rest of Ladron’s inner circle that he was going to have to read up on during rests so it wouldn’t seem like he didn’t care about them. In truth he did, it was just that they were far more interesting while they were actively searching for new sounds or creating a new song. No one had mentioned plans to work before the brief Fall Break, but lo’ and behold, when Ladron went to check up on Bryce, he had three new tracks on his Soundcloud account that were all labeled under one of the newer waves rippling across the music scene. Vaux Faker was an odd genre to be sure, taking some guitar elements from classic Math Rock and blending them with heavy, rolling basslines reminiscent of Doom Metal. That, and the vocals almost never made any kind of sense, but even when the lyrics were actually formed into something semi-cohesive, low-key famous quotes sprung up. Some were a little less than definite, but there were some such as ‘Twice the toxicity, half the mass; warring nations practice fasts’, which was the official translation of _Sludge-Curr Zag-Fang_ by _Derri Aire_. Few songs of Vaux Faker had official translations, and most of the comments on Soundcloud mentioned that the users couldn’t hear the lyrics at all. Ladron found it odd since the occasional person mentioned that they, like him, heard it throughout the song along with some other disturbing noises.

  
Having his thoughts brought back to Bryce, Gadai briefly questioned his sexuality before thinking of snuggling with another man. It still seemed to be an unattractive prospect at the time, so he continued on and wondered why the genre he’d completely dismissed was poking at his thoughts from time to time. He didn’t like anything Bryce had shown him, and he wasn’t sure of what kind of message he was supposed to be getting or if his friend was just weird, but either way, Ladron thought about skimming through a few artists to find something listenable. Even after thirty minutes of surfing, there was no success to be had, the powerful vacuum of Not-Being-Able-to-Find-That-Thing-You’re-Really-Looking-For sucking fiercely. There wasn’t much to be done about it, and Ladron really wasn’t in the mood to fool around with his phone while driving, even if he had a vent-mount. For the time being, he threw on some Bluegrass to the tune of _A Beautiful Life_ by _The Stanley Brothers_ , the road ahead of him longer than he could have ever known.


	3. Chapter Two: Wake Up

Chapter Two: Wake Up

  
  
  


_ Real Ambrose  _ was a struggle to listen to, even with the calming morning light and a cup of soothing chamomile to make the experience suck a little less. Still, it was one of the three songs Bryce had told me to listen to, and I figured that if I could make it through that one, I’d be fine for the rest. Yes, I literally said that I wasn’t one to let my friends make me do crap, but curiosity is a bitch in a blizzard when it comes to something you’re halfway interested in. To a point I halfway expected there to be a sudden epiphany at the end of  _ Real Ambrose  _ that would make the song worth listening to, but in the end, suck was suck and I just had to bail, heading to my job without a wink of sleep because I worked in a coffee shop anyway. Phoebe, the owner, was cool enough to let me sneak an espresso whenever I needed a little pep to my step since I helped her with her taxes earlier in the year. Having a mother that does everyone in the neighborhood’s taxes tends to have its benefits, and a decent understanding of tax preparation and filing happen to be apart of them.

 

Driving through Philly is always hell in the mornings, especially when you’ve only had a couple sips of decent coffee. Wake n’ Shake was the best place I knew of to get a cup of regular black coffee, but lord forbid someone ask Isabelle to do something other than add cream, sugar, and a bit of flavoring to their cup. It was definitely a place for purists, which suited me just fine. Between our older clientele who actually paid for the robusta beans and our more affluent customers that wanted goat-butt coffee, Phoebe’s business wasn’t in danger of shutting down anytime soon, though fighting with her for offtime would make one think she needs all the help she can get. In all honesty she’d keep more workers if she wasn’t so stringent with the work schedule, which is probably why she likes me. If I wasn’t helping with some of the fine measurements for the baked goods we sold, I was usually crunching numbers or helping Pheebs keep Wake n’ Shake running while she managed her home life. 

 

As luck would have it, Phoebe and Katrina had been in overnight, so everything was in top shape when I walked in, and there was even some cold brew ready to go for a quick sip to get the day rolling. I didn’t even have time to get to pressing the coffee before Isabelle came in with a smile to beat all others and a certain bounce to her step. “Well hello! If it isn’t our little country boy back from La-La Land!”

 

“Aren’t you a little old to believe in La-La Land?” I asked, getting the process started for a eworthy cup of joe.

 

“You know good and damn well I’m only twenty-four!”

“A year for every hour in the day. Still older than me, granny.”

 

Isabelle being Isabelle was about to give me a dour remark of some kind before she looked behind me and smiled. I almost ducked in time to avoid getting hit entirely, but Phobe still got the top of my noggin and some messy curls to go along with it. “Ladron, will you stop harassing women?”

 

I shot her a dirty look. “Just because I’m the only one with a Y chromosome in this shop doesn’t mean you can pick on me.”

 

Phoebe, in all her hotness, knew she could get away with saying, “No, it just means we make you do the dirty work and you don’t complain.”

 

“ _ Right _ , next time the trash needs taking out, you know where to find Izzy.”

 

“Shirking already? I might just have to give you a write up for that!”

 

“Add that to the dozen others and we’ll make a mosaic or something,” I chuckled. “Anything happen while I was back home?”

 

Isabelle spoke before Phoebe could. “We got robbed.”

 

My boss sighed and rubbed her cheek. “Yeah, that’s kinda the big news.”

 

My jaw dropped. “Holy crap, is everyone okay? Who was working when it happened?”

 

Izzy raised her hand. “I was. The guy didn’t even pull a real gun, apparently. Cops caught him halfway down the street with a ‘die cast cap gun’.”

 

“... You got robbed-” I started.

 

“It was a stressful situation!”

 

“He almost put a cap in your ass.”

 

“ _ Fuck off! _ ”

 

Phoebe was too busy cracking up to care about my teasing and Isabelle wasn’t taking it to heart, so I left it at that and started asking about some of the things that needed to be done around the shop. Apparently there wasn’t much, but the app we used for our card-reader was down for maintenance, so we switched to the backup and got the shop opened for the day. I wasn’t surprised when Kara came in with a couple of guys I recognized from her little break-up messages, but I didn’t have to deal with them, and I’d already told Isabelle that Kara was on my shitlist. The day went by smoothly until my Discord started blowing up like I was suddenly the freshman with the perfect ass all the seniors couldn’t wait to sink their teeth into. At least, that’s what I thought when I saw my direct message list. I checked the majority of the messages after my shift since I don’t like wasting time on the job, but it’s not like it would have mattered. It was like half of the people I knew at school that were either LGBTQ of some kind or into obscure music were hitting me up out of nowhere telling me to listen to  _ It Started At Primal _ ,  _ Real Ambrose _ , and  _ Ad Infinitum _ : the three songs Bryce was trying to get me to listen to the night prior. Some of the gamer tags were from mutual friends, but a good seven or eight people were unfamiliar, and I didn’t really associate with that many people from school outside of my study group. 

 

Thoroughly creeped out once I read some of the intensity in some of the messages, I resolved to at least look up the lyrics to the songs, but nothing in them really gave me any clue as to why anyone would want to listen to the songs. The first and last weren’t even supposed to have many recognizable words in them, so it just struck me as something odd. The weird crap kept adding up ever since Vaux Faker had made its way into my repertoire, though it’s not like I could ask anyone other than Mr. Weird himself about it since it was still underground like no other. I ended up finishing my shift at Wake n’ Shake with an hour to spare before my first class, so I went home to grab my board and another cup of coffee. Mr. Dorset wasn’t exactly the worst when it came to attendance, so I figured I had some leeway in my schedule, enough to stop by my favorite little bodega. As long as someone showed up long enough to pass his class, that was really all he cared about. The people who were serious about composition and making their own music were already knee deep in his curriculum or caught the VOD Tracy Davidson streamed during his first class. I would’ve been more adamant about going to his class if it wasn’t just making music, which Zephyr already knew how to do. Still, there was homework to be turned in, so I checked my laptop case for my class flash drives and grabbed the one for Dorset’s class.

 

With all of my crap gathered together in my backpack and my non-crap in my padded laptop case, I hit the streets with my trusty old longboard. The brand had long worn off the bamboo of the board, but it was still perfectly fine to ride. Passing the occasional cyclist and a few pedestrians on my way back to school brought me back to the familiar feeling of everyday life, where everything was pretty much as it should be. Yeah, I was single again, but I was pretty sure that Shelly would happily change that for me if I asked. Yeah, one of my best friends was being a dick, but I didn’t really care. Yeah, I was hiding the fact that my borther’s girlfriend was abusing pills, but… Well, that one was just what it was. Other than those three things, I wasn’t really worried about anything, and I could pretty easily whittle those worries away with facts and logic served on hard tack.

 

Getting to school is always the easy part, but getting to class? With the rent-a-cops patrolling campus, you can’t speed up the process any by hopping on a board or strapping on a pair of skates, and there are too many douchebags that throw crap at you anyway to try. No, I had fifteen minutes to cross Curtis, and I was trying to do it in a decent fashion without making myself look like a slightly portly, gangly fool. There weren’t any mirrors on my path for me to check, but I was sure that I was pulling off whatever style it is I happened to fit into well, and if I didn’t, then why waste time stressing over it?

 

A few of my classmates and I made it to Dorset’s class in time to not get chided or nagged at for being late, though it was always in jest when he did it. The class was as boring as usual, which is to say that Dorset gave it his all when it came to making music interesting, but if the spark wasn’t there, it just wasn’t there. For me, it wasn’t so much that I found his class boring so much as his tone of voice. His vocal range was abysmal for being a professor at a college of music, and it usually sat just in the middle of his register where it was at its drollest. He was a man worth listening to, just not a man that you could do so easily with. At the end of his class, I was preparing to hand in the next assignment online because I’d worked on it a few weeks prior when Dorset called me down to his desk and asked to have a quick word.

 

The deceptively dour-faced, wiry old man loomed over me, even with me being at least six feet tall without shoes on and with my hair wet. He sat back on his desk as I approached, seemingly as calm as the day had been, though something seemed a little off to me about his eyes. They didn’t stay in one place very long as I asked, “You wanted to see me, sir?”

 

“Yes, yeah, just for a moment, Mr. Gadai. Just wanted to talk to you about something you made, or rather, something you posted.” He looked over my shoulder, prompting me to do the same.

 

People were still leaving when I checked, but most of them were off to their next class or wherever they called home. “Gonna have to be more specific there, Professor. I kind post a lot.”

 

“It’s about  _ Somnus _ and  _ Montana _ .”

 

My heart skipped a beat, but I didn’t realize why my body rejected the idea of my professor hearing my music until a second later. “Professor… I never posted either of those songs.”

 

Dorset didn’t rest his eyes on me until the last student was out of the room. “You’re playing a dangerous game, son.”

 

“... Sir?”

 

He narrowed his eyes at me. “If you want your comps to stay personal, get them off of your school computer.”

 

“Wait, are you saying someone’s stealing the music I don’t post?” I asked, surprised that I’d get plagiarized. 

 

Professor Dorset looked at me like I’d been talking sports while he’d been talking classical gourmet. “... You…” He trailed off, looking confused before he started nodding. “Why don’t you take a little break from making music, Mr. Gadai? It would seem that your latest work isn’t up to par.”

 

“Is there something wrong, Professor? None of this is making any sense. Is someone stealing my music or not?”

 

“... Yes, someone may steal your music, but not for the purpose of publishing it. Then again, who are we to call the use of music theft when one doesn’t profit from it monetarily?”

 

“Yeah, right. I think.”

 

“You’re a good young man, Ladron. Don’t get roped into anything you know you shouldn’t.”

 

I cracked a lopsided smile. “What trouble could a sophomore get into here at Curtis?”

 

“You laugh until someone’s bleeding and everyone’s phone is dead,” Dorset huffed.

 

“That’s when we start partying with the Drexel guys.”

 

“Got an answer for everything, don’t you?”

 

“Not yet. I’m still working on one for when someone says that.”

 

“Smartass.” Dorset chuckled. “Get out of here, Gadai, and remember what I said about getting into trouble.”

 

“Will do, chief.” We waved each other off and I started climbing the steps to leave the room, Dorset’s odd attitude and knowledge of my failed songs making my skin crawl. 

 

It was easy enough to brush off the older mans words when I’d first heard them, but actually thinking about them made me wonder just how the hell he’d found my songs, how they were linked to me, and why he even cared in the first place. The whole conversation had been odd from the mood to the topic, and everything in between. For once in my life, I was actually afraid of the world around me because it was starting to make less and less sense. Paranoia was starting to hit me, but I couldn’t figure out why the intensity was as high as it was. Sure, the mystery around Vaux Faker and the people who made and listened to the music was deepening around me, but that wasn’t usually enough to make me scared of nothing in particular. No, the more I thought about it,. The more I was sure that my subconscious was secretly drawing lines between Bryce and his flock of friends and Dorset’s warning. I mean, it had come in a form that was pretty typical of what I’d been taught back in the day in D.A.R.E classes, and it was obvious that I should stay away from the scary sounds that made my head hurt, but there was just something about the enigmatic nature of VF that was getting to me.

 

I headed to my Schenkerian Analysis class next and that was as fascinating as it always was, but there was just too much needling at the back of my mind, distracting me from Professor Brun’s usual theatrics and sensational style of teaching. She picked on me for a few minutes since I wasn’t paying attention in her class, and that’s a one way ticket to ending up on her own personal shitlist. It was well deserved, even if I didn’t want to deal with her and her half-stupid, half-family-friendly jokes. After that, I had a few core classes to attend that I blew through without much of a care in the world since the typical academics had never really challenged me. Ironically enough I still couldn’t play a string or brass instrument to save my life, despite having been in Curtis for a year and a half at that point. Neither had ever been my strong suit, but then again, neither were the totality of the musical industry, just parts of the whole.

 

With a much needed distraction in mind, I left campus for the day and headed home, not partaking in any after school electives because I really wasn’t interested in anything other than making music or writing in my own time. Even when I wrote, I usually made a melody for the words so that I never forgot the story, so there weren’t really any clubs besides the poetry ones that I really wanted to join. Even there I never saw the point in gathering in a club just to do things you do in your own time, but then again I was an introvert that really didn’t even need friends to be happy. Give me a hundred followers on soundcloud to critique my music and that’s all I really needed to be happy, so when I went home, I thought about what Professor Dorset had said and wondered if I really should take a break from making music. It was honestly my entire life, and if I were to put it on hold, I felt like I would be waiting to breathe until I started making music again. My mind told me to listen to the older, wiser man, but my heart told me to stop thinking and just find something to listen to before I got a migraine, so I did just that and threw _Bonobo’s_ _Black Sands_ album on my record player and let the vinyl carry me into a nice, calm state.

  
  


Ruddy Rodney pounded on my door halfway through  _ Stay the Same _ , so I turned it down and he went away, that being the general extent of our interactions. If Rod’s not blaring his jazz like he can raise somehow Armstrong from the dead with volume, then I’m usually trying to shatter the windows in the house with whatever weird music no one’s ever heard of. Shelly and I have similar tastes in music while Rod and Bart are both more orthodox with their approaches to music, but we make it work in The House. Well, Rod and Shelly hate each other, but they pretend to be nice while Marissa’s over, so mommy and daddy evidently don’t like arguing in front of the kids. 

 

After Rodney got his knocks in, Shelly invited herself into my room, onto my bed, and then onto me me in the span of like, three seconds and one bounce. She then proceeded to bounce on me like I was a damn trampoline, or at least a tramp. “Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey-”

 

I would’ve looked at her if I could’ve seen straight, still being bounced along. “What, what, what, what?”

 

Shells planted her rump on my lower stomach and her hands on my shoulders. “Word got around about Kara!”

 

I rubbed my eyes under my glasses to try and get the blurry off of them. “And I care why?”

 

“Because that bitch broke your heart!”

 

“Kinda. She scraped it. Mommy Shelly already kissed my booboo better, so don’t sweat it, my gal.”

 

“... Dude, are you depressed or something?”

 

I stared at her. “Uh… No?”

 

“When’s the last time you ate?”

 

“Uh…”

 

“Bathed?”

 

“Last night.”

 

“Talked to someone because you wanted to?”

 

“I don’t do that.”

 

“Well, have you considered that it might be because you’re depressed?”

 

I rolled my eyes. “No, it’s because I’m jaded. You don’t have to be depressed to be jaded.”

 

“But a lot of jaded people  _ are  _ depressed, and you can’t tell me otherwise,” Shelly said resolutely.

 

I shrugged to the best of my ability. “Yeah, and?”

 

“When’s the last time you smoked?”

 

“When I was at my brother’s, though that’s not like it’s any of your business.”

 

“You told me you only smoke when something’s on your mind, right?”

 

“Shells, seriously, I’m fine. It was just some family business, y’know?”

 

She gave me a disbelieving look, as if she’d heard the same spiel before. “If I find out you’re lying to me…”

 

I patted her leg, her holey jeans augmented with some cute leggings underneath. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Shelly. You’re like, the only person I know who’d beat the shit out of someone for the sake of helping them.”

 

“Damn straight, and you better not forget it, alright?”

 

“God, you act like my big sister or something.”

 

“Think of me as the overly-friendly aunt with wandering hands.” She winked at me.

 

“Okay, this is officially weird.”

 

“Oh, come on! I haven’t even sexually harassed you yet!”

 

“And why don’t we keep it that way for today? Don’t you have class early anyway?”

 

“ _ Ugh _ , don’t remind me. You’ve got me for the wake-up call, right?”

 

“Don’t I always?”

 

“Yup. Which makes me wonder when you sleep.”

 

“Eh, I’ll sleep tomorrow. I’m about to plug in and start comping if you wanna stick around.”

 

“Oooh, a little collab?”

 

“Yeah, we can post it on your secret Soundcloud,” I teased.

 

Shelly colored, her cheeks pinkening adorably. “It’s not a secret! I just don’t have that many followers on there yet!”

 

“I’m one of sixty.”

 

I got hit for saying that, but it was worth it. “Like you have any more!”

 

“Couple hundred, but you know that.”

 

Shelly glared at me, but it was routine at this point. Her being so physical was odd, but invading my personal space to essentially flirt and fool around was old hat. “Just because you have a better variety doesn’t mean you’re actually better.”

 

“No, living and breathing in pitch perfect harmony makes me actually better. It’s just a Ladron thing, I guess,” I answered, drumming a steady beat on her thigh in six-eighths time.

 

She scooted back to a place I would’ve rather she not have been, her assets having nothing at all to do with why. No reason whatsoever. “Seriously, man, how do you just…  _ Make music _ all day? Like, I swear you make enough for a second life or some crap.”

 

“You’ve probably heard of my show,  _ Hannah Montana _ .”

“Pssh, whatever, dude. I’m gonna invite Marissa over later if you want to hang with us for a bit.”

 

“I’ll-” I almost said ‘pass’ before carrying on with, “have to take you up on that. I guess it wouldn’t hurt for me to break routine every now and again.”

 

“Right? You’ll enjoy yourself, I promise.”

 

“So you say. Are you gonna hop off my schlong now?”

 

Shelly wiggled her brows at me. “What, you don’t like having sexy bombshells sitting on you?”

 

“That’s a loaded question and you’re sitting on a loaded gun that misfires.”

 

“Cute.” She patted my chest. “So when are you going to get over Kara?”

 

“I’m evidently over her already. Maybe I need to make a sad song to prove I don’t give a shit.”

 

“No, you need to get back out into the field to prove that you don’t give a shit. Maybe even get a little rebound action to prove that little Johnny still knows how to dance.”

 

“Shells, I don’t like sex.”

 

“Well, have you ever had it and not been pressed into it?”

 

“No.”

 

“That’s probably why.”

 

I gave her a flat look. “So you doing the thing you do is because…?”

 

“No one else really gives you shit like I do.” She grinned evilly.

 

“Oh my lord, will you screw off?” I asked, laughing.

 

“Ah, you know you love me.”

 

“Just a little. Seriously though, get off before this gets awkward.”

 

“Maybe I want it to get awkward. Ever think of that?”

“I’ll pull on your pubes.”

 

“That’s just rude!”

 

“Then scoot, missy.”

 

She scooted forward and backward, making things weirder for me than they had been. “ _ Scooting. _ ” I rolled over and got Shelly underneath me so I was on top, pinning her to my bed. I didn’t get a chance to make a remark before she said, “So this is what it looks like when you take charge. Could be hotter.”

 

“Funny as always.” I let her up. “Would you mind grabbing me a cup of coffee?”

 

“Coffee my ass. You shake enough without that crap.”

 

“You just wish I was your boytoy so you wouldn’t need a vibrator.”

 

She sighed. “Truer words, La-La, truer words.”

 

I rolled my eyes and got off of Shelly entirely, sitting next to her on my bed. “Hey, can I talk to you about something real quick?”

 

“Oh? Ladron’s actually opening up?” She teased, giving me a warm smile. “Just giving you hell, what’s on your mind, guy?”

 

I shot her a look. “It’s nothing really, but still it’s been on my mind for a couple days.” She gestured for me to continue, so I did. “What do you know about Vaux Faker?”

 

“I know that it’s not usually any good. Hell, even Bryce’s take on it really,  _ really  _ sucks.”

 

“You ever hear any of the hidden messages?”

 

“Nope, guess I’m not one of the unlucky few.”

 

“Right. Just wondering.”

 

“That’s not all, is it?”

 

“Not quite. Feels like I should be asking if you can keep this quiet or something.”

 

“You know I will, if anything then just because I like secrets.”

 

“Fair point. See, the thing is that I made a couple of songs over the break and while I’ve been home that have hidden messages in them, only I didn’t mean to put them in there.”

 

“Creepy.” Shelly said casually.

 

“Kinda, but that’s not all. So I send my creepy little discoveries over to Ulbrich, right?”

“Bryce?”

 

“Yeah, he’s made a couple of VF style songs and I was hoping he might know why the shit’s popping up in my music. Next thing I know he’s being a total prick and telling me to stop making music.”

 

“Wait, Bryce Ulbrich is  _ not  _ that kinda guy. Even if he wasn’t as sweet as a peach, he still wouldn’t be  _ that  _ mean. Not notably, anyway.”

 

“Right? That just didn’t make any sense to me, but then Bryce told me to listen to some of his songs in some stupid order and got like, half the homo sexual-sapians in school to-”

 

“Wait, what did you just say?”:

 

“I got a bunch of messages from random people telling me to listen to Bryce’s music.”

 

“... Yeah, okay. That’s weird, but that’s not it, is it?”

 

“Nah. So earlier today I’m in Dorset’s class, right? Well, he has me come down after his lecture and starts talking to me about the last couple of songs I made, but the only thing is that those songs never left my school computer.”

 

“What?”

 

“ _ Exactly _ . Dorset started giving me this crazy warning about not getting into something dangerous, but I had like,  _ no clue  _ what he was talking about, and it’s like he just changed into a different person all of a sudden. I mean, yeah, a teacher at a music school’s gonna be a little weird, but not  _ that  _ kinda weird, you know?”

 

“Yeah… I guess. I dunno, Ladron, something sounds really fishy here.”

 

“That’s what I was starting to think, but I’m prone to paranoia. Something just isn’t sitting right with me.”

 

She smiled deviously, her canines popping out over her lower lip like she was a vampire with a fang disability. “That’s because I’m sitting to the left of you.”

 

“Good one! Ha! Ha! Ha!” I barked.

 

Shelly nudged me, giving me some serious side-eye. “Fake laughs are bad and you should feel bad. Anyway, you might want to do some more research into Vaux Faker and see what comes up. I’ll do some talking and listening if you want to comb the web.”

 

“I don’t know if there’ll be too much more out on the internet about it from the last time I checked, but it never hurts to be sure. Thanks, Shells.”

 

“Anytime, La-La. Speaking of time…”

 

“Yeah, yeah, your essay on measures is done. You have the coffee?”

 

“It’s in my room with your name on it, cutie pie.”

 

“Glad doin’ business with ya. You know, this is a wonderful friendship we have here.” I smiled and patted her back.

 

“Wait, are you friendzoning me?”

 

“Were you waiting on me to ask you out or something?”

 

Shelly glared at me for like, ten seconds before getting up and leaving me in her wake, surprised and enlightened. My own obliviousness shocked me, but I can’t say that it was a surprise in itself that Shelly was open to a relationship with me. However, I expected her to want to wait at least a couple of days before trying to catch me for herself. I didn’t think I was that desirable with my somewhat doughy frame being backed by the slightest hint of muscle tone. My messy black hair had never done me any favors in getting girls before, and the man behind my glasses seemed largely unimpressed with his own looks whenever I saw him, so I rarely worried about the opposite sex as far as romantic relationships went. I enjoyed female company, it was just that I didn’t feel the need to put my peepee anywhere other than my underwear most of the time, and the seldom whim that made me wank was as fleeting as my faith in humanity.

 

I resolved to buy my best friend and only female roommate a bag of Halloween candy and an eighth of something green and smelly as a bribe for her forgiveness. It could also be seen as a peace offering, but bribe sounds better in my book, so I’m going with that. The night was young by the time I was ready for a slumber, but I rarely slept two nights in a row and I’d slept the previous night, so I dedicated the midnight oil to making more music since that was kind of my bread and butter. Instead of making the beat first, I went ahead and did a challenge run, posting some sound bytes on Soundcloud in a folder so people could do my little challenge with me. I put out six different percussions, a few string instruments, and a couple of electronic type noises that all worked decently together. I ended up making two songs that I ended up calling  _ Moonshine  _ and  _ Daybeam _ . I didn’t hear any hidden meaning in either of them at first, but a second listen through the first song made me wonder just what in the bloodiest of steaks was going on because I distinctly heard,  _ ‘The pattern is the pattern, the ear-tour will yield’ _ on repeat, as well as  ‘ _ Fracture, Shatter, Break, Mend _ ; _ The fear is in the ground, we will all rise again. _ ’, which were similar things to that in which I’d heard from before in VF songs. 

 

With Shelly mad at me and Bryce being a dick, I figured that the worst I could do was nothing, so I did  _ something _ . I loaded up Soundcloud, found my playlist named ‘Peer-Pressuring-Polly’ and started it. From the first notes of  _ It Started At Primal _ , I was creeped out like a crepe clown came to town just to perform at my birthday party, except I hate clowns, my birthday's in winter, I hate parties, and crepes are holy and to be untouched by clowns in general. Everything about the song was just  _ wrong _ from the grinding bass to the screeching vocals. 

 

_ Verily verily verily, I _ ; 

_ Verily Verily Verily, I _ ; 

_ Verily Verily Verily, I _ ;

_ Sow the seeds; We mul-it-ply _

 

_ Verily Verily Verily, I _ ;

_ Verily Verily Verily, I _ ;

_ Verily Verily Verily, I _ ;

_ Lift the seals and open eyes! _

 

For the sake of fairness, I’ll admit that the lyrics to that one weren’t terribly disturbing, but the rest of the song? It was just hard to listen to, and it wasn’t because it had to rhythm, though that was a part of it. No, everything about the song together and separately just seemed as though it were the antithesis of everything I knew about music altogether, but I didn’t even have time to get over the fact that serious, non-illegal-but-still-legit crimes had been committed against me and all people who’d made music in history. No, the crossfade started playing  _ Real Ambrose  _ while my mind was still weak, and I don’t say that lightly. Getting through the entirety of  _ It Started Primal  _ had taken some nerve and a lot of shock on my part, which I’m not kidding about. After the first minute, I don’t think I could have even gotten my headphones off in time to stop the rest of the playlist since I was just that much of a vegetable. The corn was real during the first song, but during the second?

 

_ Potato time. _

 

_ Real Ambrose’ _ s lyrics hadn’t seemed like they were that disturbing the first time I’d heard them. At least, not the first half anyway. The words had heat behind them to be sure, but listening to them with my mind still being raw from the insanity that was  _ It Started Primal _ had me seeing the song in a new light. Namely, it had me hallucinating with my room turning into a den of some kind around my very being as I listened to the song. It wasn’t as if things were melting away. No, my desk simply faded away like it had never been there before along with my electronic equipment and some of my analog stuff. Bryce’s music still played in my ears as I came back to the semblance of reality that my mind could handle at the moment, which was little to none. I remembered who I was and where I should have been, but I knew that I wasn’t  _ me, _ and it was obvious that I wasn’t in Philly anymore. The low light of the den was interesting to me since it came in streams of different colors, which made me realize that I was experiencing some manner of synesthesia to account for the lack of visible light in the semi-cramped space I was in. 

 

Looking around yielded brownish-greenish black walls and streams of warm colors, so I figured that I’d follow the warmest one wherever it went since I had nothing better to do and I couldn’t hear the music anymore. Time didn’t seem to be made of the right kind of fabric at the moment, my long time experience as a person in the fourth dimension telling me that we’d gone from Kansas to Oz and I was Toto. I knew I had to be Toto because I was walking on four legs and it seemed pretty natural, but that was pretty much all that was remarkable about the body, and that includes the fur. Nothing seemed out of place, and that was another thing that helped ground me, to keep me on the level. For one, Ladron Gadai was notoriously lacking in the body hair department, and my facial hair never grew beyond a couple of inches anyway. Having a full-body beard didn’t sound like something I could pull off, so I figured that I’d suddenly gotten really,  _ really  _ high and thought I’d have fun as long as I wasn’t having a bad time.

 

I kept following the light trails down the tunnel that branched out from the original den until I broke daylight, the gradual incline leading me to a grassy knoll and a clear blue sky. The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by predators of all shapes and sizes as if my arrival had been the signal they’d been waiting for. In the moment I knew I was safe, that I was among friends or associates, but I didn’t know where the general feeling of ‘Stay on your side, I’ll stick to mine’ came from. It was familiar and inviting, as if the boundaries of the tasmanian devil were respected by the tiger, and the lone wolf’s by the bear. Each had their own little space and in that space they were Judge, Jury, and Executioner, which I respected as a loner myself. Even among the less threatening species around me, I knew that they could hold their own, that there were bigger fish in the sea than I. It was humbling, but not in a bad way. Up to a certain point I wanted to dive back into my hole and not come out to face the animals/people waiting for me, but I knew it would be rude to waste their time since I’d taken nigh on twenty-one years to greet them properly. How I knew that, I didn’t know, but I was well aware of the fact that I had a snout and that was cool.

 

Stepping out of my den with caution in my paws and my ears high, ready to pick up the slightest noise, I prepared to give an opening statement. Or blather. Whichever. However, Just as I opened my mouth to speak, the scene before me faded just as my room had and I found myself in a new place, but back in my familiar body. Away from the smells and sights of the world before, I found myself lost in the memory of the land. The air had been cleaner, more floral than that of anywhere I’d been. The world had seemed to be made of brighter colors, everything more vivid and realistic in turn while the smells had been more intense and diverse, which I attributed to my animalistic senses. The warmth that I held close to my body with my fur reminded me of blankets during cold winter nights, but as a hug that kept my body defended against the roots and rocks in the tunnels I’d painstakingly dug for both safety and slumber.

 

The squeal of a microphone brought me back to the new location I found myself in, the man before me being barrel-chested and jolly in disposition. He seemed like a friendly fellow with his white, U-shaped haircut and red cheeks, but I didn’t want to assume anything. After all, I had just been some manner of small animal before, and I had no idea what was happening at the moment. I waved at the man and he gave me a wink, thumbing his nose and giving his beard a stroke as his hideous scarlet suit stretched along with the motion. I checked my own clothing situation and saw that I was wearing a snow leopard-print three-piece with a black metal pocket-watch, black metal rings, and a black and white handkerchief in my breast pocket.

 

I took out my hankie and cleaned my glasses because I thought it made me look casual in the face of whatever the hell was happening to me. “So when did I drop acid?”

 

The heavyset man chuckled, his voice as deep and welcoming as I’d assumed it would be. “ _ With intent you will surmise; begin, continue, then demise. All that starts will have an end; the cycle keeps turning, begin again. _ ”

 

I was surprised that he spoke in literal music, as in with bass and trombone to accompany his lyrics, but I was a little confused until it hit me. “Ad infinitum. Until the end of time.”

 

He winked and the scene changed once more, but this time I was in bed and nothing was happening. The odd feeling of being out of touch with reality was gone and the familiar feeling of being  _ me  _ was back, which I appreciated then more than ever. In my haste to make sense out of what had just happened, I neglected to see the early morning sun and was late to Wake n’ Shake for my shift, though Phoebe forgave me since I looked like hell. Feeling as bad as I looked, I made it through the work day and the school day one after the other, but before I could get off campus, my History of Music professor from the previous year, Ms. Benson, caught me as I passed her on my way to Clancy’s. I wanted to hurry up and get some comfort food from my favorite little Mom n’ Pop, but Benson wanted to chit-chat and ask about my nonexistent hangover. She went ahead and assumed the worst of one of her best students in recent memory (Her words, not mine) and told me that she’d happily whip me up a quick batch of her sure-kill hangover cure. When you’re not hungover, you tend not to be dehydrated, which would be the point of drinking a slurry of different sports drinks.

 

Once I got away from the  _ lovely _ world that is people pretending to care, I got home and got my coffee from Shelly’s room. She got me a dark roast and that was fine, but I generally preferred a medium or light since they had better fragrances, and I’m nothing if not a nut for good coffee. Still, it was a good brand and it was what l favored, so I wasn’t complaining. I didn’t have any classes the next day, which would usually mean that I’d be making music all night and all day, but I just couldn’t find the motivation to do it. I didn’t even finish my cup of coffee, and that’s rather unusual for me. It took me three hours to contact Bryce, but it only took him thirty seconds to agree to meet up with me and discuss what had happened. We set a date for midnight and I prayed that my sleep wouldn’t be as restless as my day had been.

 

Bryce met me at my usual dive, Clancy’s, late at night for a burger and a talk. He got a burger while I loaded up on chili cheese fries and a tenderloin, compliments of Harry the sketchy chef. After we got our food, I opened the conversation with, “The fuck is going on, Bryson? This shit is beyond normal level of crazy, man.”

 

He nodded a couple of times and shrugged, dipping one of his fries in his side of gravy. “Well, man, there’s a few ways to explain this, and I’m kind of tired, so you just ask what you want to ask and I’ll find a way to answer.” 

 

“Alright. What’s the deal with Vaux Faker? Why does it have hidden messages?”

 

He gave me a look. “I should’ve started. The reason VF has hidden messages is because it’s supposed to. Without the special frequencies, it wouldn’t have any power.”

 

I stared at him like he’d lost his damn mind. “Have you lost your damn mind?”

 

“You hit me up because you broke through, right?”

 

“... Meaning?”

 

“You felt your spirit form. Spoke to Santa.  _ Ad Infinitum _ and all that, y’know?”

 

“Dude, you’re shit at explaining things.”

 

“Well, maybe that’s because I barely know anything,” Bryce huffed.

 

I sat back in my seat, visibly frustrated. “If you barely knew anything then why did you pretend to know shit?”

 

“Because I  _ do  _ know shit. I was born into this, man.”

 

“ _ Then explain! _ ”

 

“Fine, if you wanna be a little faggot about it.” The look I gave him was enough to make him shoot me a shit-eating grin. “So you know the human hearing range is like, Twenty to twenty thousand hertz, right?”

 

“I do now.”

 

“Right. Anyway, outside of the regular frequencies we can hear, there are certain frequencies and soundwaves that interlink and cross slash crash against each other, but that happens all the time. The special thing about Vaux Faker and the messages is that they’re made up of the crashing, liking frequencies. You with me so far?”

 

“... So things I’m not supposed to be able to hear make things I  _ can  _ hear?”

 

“Exactly. Think of Vaux Faker as a genre of spell, and think of the messages in Vaux Faker as the quick and dirty way to cast spells.”

 

“... You’re high as fuck.”

 

“It’ll be like, ten times easier to just show you.” He snorted, rummaging around in his pocket before pulling out an odd looking whistle that was somewhere between an ocarina and a pan flute. “This baby right here is mine and mine only. No touchy, only looky, capische?”

 

“Aye, aye, craptain. Is that your buttplug?”

 

“That’s homophobic.”

 

“I ain’t scared of you, homo.”

 

“Fear me and my rainbow ray!”

 

“I’ll give you a quick kek and ask if we can get back on task. Are you gonna blow the whistle on a system of magic older than time itself or something?”

 

Bryce smiled. “Not as dumb as you might look. Now listen close and hear me when I say that this is gonna blow your mind. Stay cool okay?” I nodded and he pressed his lips to his little device, his cheeks puffing out slightly as he somehow spoke his native language of something European through the whistle-whatchamacallit. 

 

I didn’t ask what he was saying, but I knew the effect it was having on our surroundings. Immediately the same inky blackness that was filling the night outside was creeping into the diner, the lights shining, but not putting off any light. Soon all I could see was the lights and the excited, fearful chatter of the few patrons and employees in the diner at the ungodly hour. Then just as slowly as it had started, it stopped and the darkness receded, life continuing on as if it had never happened for our waitress. She stopped by to bring me another order of double-crispy regular fries with a smile and a wink, topping off Bryce’s water with an icy pitcher. Once she was gone, I looked at Bryce’s confident smirk and was tempted to burn him at the stake for witchcraft and black magic.

 

Instead of going all Salem on his ass, I settled for asking, “ _ What the fuck? _ ”

 

“You wanna do that too?”

 

I looked at him for a moment, one that seemed to stretch on long beyond it’s deserved 

Span. It took me time to answer because Professor Dorset’s words were ringing through my ears, his warning as clear as day in my mind. There was no doubt about it. I was on the cusp of something greater than myself; maybe even greater than music. Bryce had shown me the possibility of a world beyond that of which I already knew, and me being me I knew that I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I turned down the chance to do something cool with noises.

 

“I’m in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author guy here, let me know how you're enjoying the story, things I could work on, etc. It's always nice to hear from readers.
> 
> As Always, Stay Cool Kids.


	4. Chapter Three: Syncopated

Chapter Three: Syncopated

  
  
  


I was too excited to sleep, and it was hard for me to blame me. Other than for the fact that I’m me, I couldn’t blame myself for my level of hype because I’d just seen magic in person for the first time, and it wasn’t some David Copperfield, Chris Angel type crap: it was true blue magic with its own little quirks and perks. There was nothing I wanted to do more than dive right into the world of music all over again, but Bryce hadn’t told me anything about… Well,  _ anything _ . Him being him, I knew that he’d want to keep me in the dark for as long as he could so he’d have a reason to screw with me. Even if it was just for fun, I took my interests too seriously to learn under Bryce in any capacity, so I took to the next best thing:

 

The group chat.

 

Beyond the normal tract of a young males reach lies the group chat where all information is sourced and stored. Within the group chat I learned that Bryce wasn’t the only one into Vaux Faker, and through a little a digging I found out that Jeanie, aka Jeanette Jill Jameson, was into VF as well. She just so happened to be in my study group, so I knew she had a focus on academics and would be the best source of knowledge, but when I contacted her about learning more, she sent me a message that ultimately equivocated to, ‘Nah man.’. With that little lead down and dead since I don’t like pushing people to do things, I surveyed my options and resolved to listen to more VF songs to see what would happen. The result was that I could actually listen to the music, it just sounded different than before. Where the bass had once been thrumming and heavy, it was now a little lighter and less oppressive. There weren’t as many harsh changes in the vocals or pitch, nor were the guitar chorus’ terribly bad either. The more I listened to VF, the less I hated it and found that I just generally felt better during some songs and stronger during others. There weren’t any hallucinations or other impairments to comment on, so it was a pleasant experience altogether.

 

After a few hours of sleep, I was woken up by Marissa shaking me awake with a smile on her face, breath smelling of maple and cinnamon. “Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!”

 

My eloquent response was somewhere along the lines of  _ “Ugh. _ ”

 

“Sounds about right. Come on, La-La, Logan made tons this morning.”

 

“Doesn’t Drexley need you or something?”

 

“Nope, no classes for today, just like you~” She tried to tickle me under my chin.

 

I mussed up her hair because she was messing with me, making her leave me alone to fix it. “Give me like, five to actually wake up and I’ll be down.”

 

“Ruin my hair, why don’t you.” she grumbled irritably.

 

“Shush. You know you love me.”

 

“You’re lucky it’s a weekday, otherwise your ass would be stitched closed!”

 

“I have jokes about that, but I doubt you want to hear them.”

 

“Asshole!”

 

“Vaginal mucus.”

 

Marissa scrunched her face up. “Why’d you have to take it there?”

 

“Assholes have poop. Vaginal mucus is cleaner than poop.”

 

“Shut up before I have Shelly spank you.”

 

I sat up and stretched, not worried about her idle threat. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, grab me a cup of coffee, will you please?”

 

“You’re lucky I like you Ladron, otherwise you’d be stuck getting your own coffee.”

 

“I’ll give you a kiss for some peace and quiet while we’re saying things.”

 

“Speaking of kisses, how are you doing without Kara?”

 

I raised a brow and folded my legs, rubbing some excess blurry out of my eyes before grabbing my glasses. “Shit, I’m barely noticing she’s gone to be honest with you. It’s nice to not have to worry about someone or that kind of shit.”

 

“It’s nice to have someone to cuddle. I was thinking about asking Shelly if she wants to make it official, but I don’t know if she’d go for it.”

 

“I was thinking about asking Shelly out, but I don’t really want to be in another relationship right now.”

 

“Then why don’t we both ask her out and I’ll keep her busy?”

 

I chuckled at that, knowing that Marissa was being all too serious. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to watch.”

 

“Do you really just not want to?”:

 

“It’s not that, it’s more like I don’t want to beat my meat in front of you.”

 

“If it makes you feel any less awkward, I’d think it’s hot.”

 

“It really doesn’t, but thanks.”

 

“You’re welcome. Now hurry up and come get breakfast!”

 

“Keep your hands off my ass.”

 

“But you have such a nice ass for a guy! It’s a bubble butt!”

 

“Do squats like me and you’ll have glutes like me, honey. Seriously though, let me get some breathing room and I’ll see you in a sec.”

 

“Mwah, La-La!”

 

“Bye Felicia.”

 

Marissa threw one of my records at me while it was still in the case, which I was both annoyed by and thankful for. I was annoyed because it probably messed up my case, but thankful because the case had nothing to do with how the music sounded. Quite a few pieces of the collection I’d brought with me were irreparably damaged when I’d first bought them anyway, but my Adios Ghost vinyl had done nothing to that wretched woman, nor had my buttocks. I say the latter because because Marissa had the odd habit of treating my rear like it had bad-mouthed her mother, which makes me think of a different kind of shit-talking. That aside, I got my lazy ass out of bed and downstairs for a mouthful of om-noms, but that reward came at the cost of getting my ass smacked by Marissa. Getting bitched at by BB for being late to Logan’s mid-week bruncheon was worth it for the food, and watching Ruddy’s new squeeze walk around in one of the big bastard’s shirts wasn’t half bad. I’m wasn’t usually one for blondes, but she had a certain bounce to her that I couldn’t put my finger on. A certain perk to her that I couldn’t quite place. 

 

Actually she just had a really nice ass, and it was constantly flashing as she walked.

 

After breakfast, everyone other than me pretty much scattered to go do their daily do’s, so I did what I wanted to do and made another pot of coffee, four more toaster waffles, and got my headphones on for a day of serious gaming. It was definitely a sandbox-y kind of day, and I was definitely in the mood for a little free-roaming, my wanderlust being sated by a little digital screwing around. There were plenty of things to choose from, so I never stuck to anything beyond a few missions here and there, just because I like to work on multiple projects at once. Even with my music, everyone in The House knew about the secret project, which I gained inspiration for from a little game called  _ Borderlands 2 _ , which I was on my billionth playthrough of. The D&D level gave me another idea for some interesting sounds, so I incorporated them into my mix and did a little more…  _ Mixing _ . Yes. Blending, but with an M. 

 

Anyway, it was well into the afternoon before I decided to shower, shave, and grab another something or other to cram into my intake orifice. It ended up being a grilled cheese and some chips which is always healthy, I hear. Shelly caught me butter-fingered during my escape to my room, the expression painted on her face giving me reason to pause, my jaws freezing in motion. She strode toward me, her short, silver and violet hair looking like she’d just been through the worst windstorm of the year. Before she could either yell at me or try to hurt my precious, precious emotionables, I plucked one of the leaves that had gotten stuck to her head out of her hair and pursed my lips.

 

Shelly blushed and ran her hands through her locks to check for more foliage, finding a couple stragglers. Her face flushed further and I gave her a moment to gather her words, but she evidently wanted me to talk first. “... So… You wanna get a coffee at Wake n’ Shake?”

 

She crossed her arms and scrunched her nose up. “I hate coffee.”

 

“We have some really good tea too.”

 

Her irritated, pouty expression wasn’t something I’d call ‘cute’, but it was still kind of attractive. Along with the array of colorful and occasionally dangerous bracelets, bomber jacket, and knife-pleated skirt, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to kiss her or laugh at her, which I assume is good when looking for a romantic partner. It was also a plus that she was super cool and pretty much the only person I’d ever tell my sexploits to, but then again, taking her on as my girlfriend and potential wife meant that I couldn’t talk to her about sex anymore, which would suck. There were other people that would probably listen and tell their own stories, but no one would ever match up to Shelly and her vibe, which made me a little sad. Much sadder than breaking up with Kara overall, though not sad enough to cry. I wasn’t a bitch, nor was I that reactive, so weighing my options was more objective than it could have been. I could either chance a relationship with the very face of crazy as I knew it, or I could spurn her and potentially lose her as a friend. There was always the option that I was overthinking things and being super melodramatic, which was likely.

 

In any case, I still needed an answer from Shelly, and she was taking her time in giving it. As many of my elders have told me in life, the key to dealing with women is patience and understanding. For example, if you don’t understand, be patient, and if you can’t be patient, try to understand. As I was trying to be patient, Shelly said, “Look, Ladron, I get that boys will be boys, but you’re different, aren’t you?”

 

I looked to the left and to the right. “... I’m like, one of the only guys I know that doesn’t like beer, fast cars, or sex.”

 

“But you still found Kara attractive in some way, right?”

 

I couldn’t help but furrow my brow at that. “Kara had a nice body, squishy in all the right places. What’s that got to do with anything?”

 

“... Do you even think I’m cute? I mean…” I almost cut her off, but I felt like it was time to be patient. “... I just don’t get you, dude. Here I am, never had a problem getting a guy for at least a couple months and you just friendzone me from day one. There you are, annoying, snorty-oink-oink girlfriend attached to  _ the chillest guy _ , and everyone’s telling you that she’s screwing around on you but you don’t even listen! Like, what’s your  _ deal!? _ ”

 

“... I do things that are bad for me?” I shrugged and shook my head. “I dunno, maybe you should convince me to smoke meth so I’ll marry you.”

 

“ _ Pff- _ No! I’m not laughing at that!”

 

“You’ll laugh at my dick, I promise you,” I replied forlornly.

“Will you get serious for like, two seconds? I’m trying to talk to you here!”

 

“Let me level with you, Shells. If I wasn’t dating Kara by the time I actually talked to you, you would’ve been an option. At the moment, I’m not trying to rebound right into another relationship that might ruin my favorite friendship, but I’m open to the idea of a thing between us.”

 

She inhaled and exhaled like she’d surfaced from a deep sea dive. “... Do you even want a girlfriend?”

 

“No, I want you.” 

 

Shelly smiled at that, little more than a curving of her lips. I knew it’d been the right thing to say, even if I’d just spoken the first thing that came to my mind. “Cheesy fucker.”

 

I held up my sandwich. “Irony.”

 

“Don’t tell me that’s a grilled cheese.” 

 

“It’s not a panini.”

 

“Are grilled cheeses paninis?”

 

“Are they pressed?”

 

“Huh. Point Bubble-Butt.”

 

“You’re just jealous that my ass is nicer than yours,” I scoffed playfully.

 

Shelly puckered her lips, uncrossing and recrossing her arms. “That’s just not nice, dude.”

 

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure yours feels nicer.”

 

“Sure.” The flatness of her tone could have made a mesa considerably more level.

 

“... Want my grilled cheese?”

 

“What were you gonna do tonight?”

 

“Well, I-”

 

“And you’re already wrong, my guy! Tonight you and me are going to collaborate like you’ve been promising forever.”

 

I gave her a mild look. “You didn’t know if I was gonna say that or not.”

 

“Were you?”

 

“No, but I very easily could’ve,” I sniffed haughtily.

 

Shelly bag-tagged me for being snooty and started dragging me toward stairs by the wrist. “Come on, we’re wasting time!”

 

“ _ Ow! _ ”

 

“Get over it.”

 

I kicked one of her feet into the other and made her trip over herself, nearly taking both of us down in one move. She looked back at me, her smoky mascara and eyeliner making her glare seem that much more severe, the fullness of her lips a little more pronounced as she started the ‘Y’ of, “You little fuck! Next time, I’m kicking you in the dick!”

 

“If I had the upper body strength to lift a wet paper bag, I’d throw you over my shoulder and lock you in a closet.”

 

Now, by no stretch of the imagination was Shelly what I would call ‘fat’. Dummy thicc, yes, and she wore it well. Still, mentioning the fact that I was weak and implying that Shelly was stronger than me meant that she wrapped me up in a bearhug and tried to pick me up. She actually managed to do it and accidentally slammed my head into a wall while trying to carry me up some stairs. We laughed it off after she nearly dropped me on our way upstairs, but she almost dumped my ass on the landing because I was apparently too heavy to climb stairs with. Me being me, I had to prove that I could carry my new quasi-partner up the damn stairs, so I made myself look like a jackass and did it through willpower and carbo-loading. Once we were upstairs, however, Shelly put me in a headlock and dragged me around until I said ‘Auntie’ because she’s weird like that, but once my face wasn’t pressed against one of her boobs we got to making sweet, hot,  _ passionate  _ music. 

With Shelly providing vocals to lyrics we came up together, I started in on getting a steady beat made with a few hiccups for flair and thus we had the bones of a song, having technically worked backwards. I debated on whether or not to let her know that I was the guy who’d produced her favorite EP of our senior year of high-school and decided that I would tell her when we were ready to post the song. After a few long hours of editing and a few more recordings and rerecordings,  _ Bangtwig _ was made and Shelly was super hyped to hear the final mix, as was I. The last edit had been made half-blind, so I was ready to hear the rest of the song altogether, having taken over after Shelly did her part on the program. Overall the song turned out to be good, which I took to be something of note since I’d been on a sort of dry streak when it came to ‘good’ music. Adequate and passable songs were all well and fine, but something worthy of being called ‘good’ hadn’t been produced in a couple months, and I was glad to hear something satisfactory for once. 

 

We both liked the song well enough, but Shelly was in love with it. “Holy crap, dude, you know who that sounds like?” 

 

The song was still playing when she’d asked her question, so I raised a brow. “It either sounds like you or your twin sister, I’m guessing.”

 

“No, eggfart, it sounds just like freaking Zephyr! This could have come straight off of  _ Wendigo Quotes _ !” The excitement on her face was heartwarming to say the least, but I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if…

 

“Honestly your vocals are a lot cleaner than Molly Hart’s and Fool’s Bridge. They send me messy crap all the time and expect me to make something worth listening to.”

 

She snorted. “Yeah, like  _ Molly Hart  _ would send your ass anything, let alone a legit clip for a song.”

 

I whipped out my phone, unlocked it, opened Soundcloud, and went to my alt account. “Mmm… Not her directly, but her manager likes to branch out.”

 

Shelly rolled her eyes. “Next thing you’re gonna try and tell me is that you have  _ Skylark _ on speedial.”

 

“Fuck that prick. Tried to claim a sixty-five cut on the bullshit-ass revenue from that collab.  _ That’s  _ why the  _ Cocoa Steam _ EP only had part one and two of  _ Nice to Eet U _ .” I passed Shelly my phone.

 

She glanced at it before doing a double take, giving it another look. After a little digging, Shelly gave me the most amazed look I’d ever seen on a person’s face. “... The  _ fuck _ .”

 

“Language, deary.”

 

“Motherfu-  _ Ladron!  _ You gotta be shitting me right now!”

 

I popped my neck because it was stiff. “If you’re this loud during sex, we’re not having it.”

 

She opened her mouth to say something else before she stopped and looked at my laptop. “... I just did a collab with Zephyr. Zephyr just remixed my vocals. I wrote a song with  _ Zephyr _ …”

 

“Yeah, and you’ll get half the revenue from iTunes and all that shit.”

 

“...  _ Dude. _ ” 

 

I thought that she might pass out or faint, but all Michelle did was sit down and finger the piercing in her left ear. Upon closer inspection I saw that it was actually a little pentagon. “You alright?”

 

“Uh… Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine… Did… Did Kara know you’re… Well, that you’re Zephyr?”

 

“Kara likes Country.”

 

“Right. So… You’re lowkey famous…”

 

“Kinda. I’ve got Soundcloud hype, but I’ve still got a ways to go before I aim for a record deal.”

 

“You have at least three hundred thousand people ready to buy a CD from you at the drop of an album,” She said numbly.

 

“I have like, a hundred people ready to buy a CD. Everyone else pirates shit.”

 

“Ladron, how do you not see this as a big deal!?”

 

“... Because I live my everyday life as Ladron Gadai, not Zephyr. I don’t do gigs, don’t go to venues, make most of my money from Patreon and Bandcamp… I mean, I’d love to make music for a living, I’m just not sure if I want to do it with the scene as volatile as it is.”

 

“It’s not going to get any better any time soon. People don’t want someone who sticks around and just makes the same old boring music, and  _ that’s not you _ . This year alone you’ve released like, two albums, and a crap ton of singles! Like, I see why you’re in your room all the time now. I really do.”

 

“It’s obviously not for my health,” I chuckled.

 

Shelly cracked a little smile. “No, it’s for your wealth. How much have you made from being famous so far?”

 

“First off, I’m not famous. Second, I’ve only made like, a part-time jobs worth of money out of it. Even then if I wanted to go pro, I’d have to figure all that crap out, which is kinda what I planned on doing my junior year to see if I wanted to actually do the DeadMau5 thing.”

 

“So… Let me get this straight.” She set both of her hands in front of her. “You want to make music, but you don’t want to get the main benefit from making music people listen to.”

 

“That’s… Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I just want to be heard, not seen.”

 

“You would be such a good villain for like, a comic book or something. Like the White Violin, but with a contrabassoon.”

 

“I’d say something racist, but it’s racist and I like Asian food too much to be racist.”

 

“You’re only half white, I wasn’t being racist.”

 

“That’s a little racist to say there, Kai Lan.”

 

“I’m Vietnamese and you fucking know that.”

 

“I don’t know Vietnamese. I don’t even know Chinese. Should’ve watched more ethnic children’s shows.”

 

“I feel like you’re distracting me from something.”

 

“The fact that it’s five in the morning and you have stuff to do soon?”

 

“...  _ Shit _ .”

 

“Are we kissing goodbye yet, or…?”

 

Shelly shook her head and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Earn one and you’ll get one. That means I expect a dinner and a movie before these lips go anywhere.”

 

“Didn’t you kiss me like, less than a week ago?”

 

“That was before I was playing hard to get.” She said the words as if they were supposed to make sense to me, but I thought that it was firm Shelly logic.

 

“Alright. Any ideas on where you want to go?”

 

“... I want some jasmine tea.”

 

“Trip to Teavana?”

 

“More like a discount at Wake n Shake.”

 

“My kinda gal.” I gave her a big, cheesy grin and Shelly came in for a fast hug before ducking out of my room and downstairs to her own portion of the domicile. 

 

Domicile. Odd word, but let’s not focus on that and instead focus on the fact that I’d forgotten to tell Shelly that I’d learned more about Vaux Faker. It seemed like it would’ve been impossible to miss during the hours we spent in each other’s company, but we’d somehow, someway, gone the entire night without talking about the magic within music. I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that I’d purposefully left it out of our conversation, a familiar feeling of anxiety over my fingertips. ItT was almost as if there were ants beneath my skin, crawling about in circles around my digits. Drumming my fingers against my leg assuaged the feeling easily enough, and getting in touch with Bryce made me feel less nervous. It took him awhile to reply, but when he did he told me that he was going to be going to his Mistress’ house after classes that Friday. The invitation to go along was appreciated, but the more I thought about life as I knew it past my homecoming, the more unsettled I’d become. Professor Dorset’s warning blared in my head all over again, but I didn’t have his class until after my shift at Wake n Shake.

 

My shift went by without complaint, though Phoebe did mention that I was going to have to pick up Wednesday of the next week to even my schedule out. The schedule had me starting my work week at Thursday and going through the weekend anyway, so starting a day early didn’t really bother me any. It was also extra money in my pocket, so I wasn’t complaining. Yes, I technically made enough from music to not have to work my way through college, but I honestly just liked working and doing things other than composing or learning from time to time. After my break from scholastic monotony and melodic harmonization, I dove right back into it head first and got to Dorset’s class before anyone even showed up. He was present and accounted for at his desk, looking somewhat like an old hawk that was comfortably perched with its beak in a book. Whether he was reading for enlightenment, enjoyment, or to look smart, I don’t know, but I do know that his book was in danger of falling out of his sleeping hands

 

I stepped forward and knocked on his desk a couple of time to get his attention, his eyes snapping open as he jolted awake with a dadsome grunt. Once he laid eyes on me, he shook his head. “I already know why you’re here, kid. If she’s got the seal on you, you’re on her team. Now or later you’ll see things her way and you’ll decide-”

 

“What.”

 

“... I just assumed again, didn’t I?”

 

“Yes sir, I believe you did,” I confirmed uneasily.

 

“Have you met the Head of Strings or Head of Percussions in person yet?” Dorset asked quietly.

 

“... Uh… No?”

 

“So you haven’t met the Dean?”

 

“Not since the student tour thing.”

 

“... Did you dig-”

 

“Music is magic, just gotta find the right song, right?”

 

“That’s such a dumb way to put it, but it’s accurate so I can’t fault you.”

 

“Sorry sir.” I said, trying to see reasons not to spit on his desk and ditch his lame-ass class for the day.

 

“No you’re not, and I don’t blame you.” Dorset rubbed his salt-n-peppered fuzz. Why he kept it so low, I couldn’t have told you. “No, no… It’s for the best this way. We’ll talk more after class, but for now I need to know who taught you how to hear the Synch.”

 

“I don’t know what that is.”

 

“Did you go through Hell, wake up as an animal, then meet Paul Bunyan?”

 

“More of a buff grandpa in a red pimp-suit,” I explained.

 

Dorset sighed pretty damn hard for a man with his diameter. I was a little surprised it didn’t sound like a reed whistle when he exhaled so heavily, but then his breath caught in his throat. “Wait…”

 

“Yeah, he wasn’t Santa. Guy was kinda jacked for having a snow cap.”

 

“You know, why don’t you skip class today and go… Well, I hate to encourage this, but go try some drugs or something, Ladron, because you probably won’t regret it that bad.”

 

I stared at my college professor, a teacher and leader at one of the foremost outstanding universities in the country, and wondered if he’d actually told me to do drugs. “.... Sir, did I hear you right?”

 

Dorset shook his head, not breaking eye contact the entire time. The juxtaposition of his still body and eyes against his swiveling head was intimidating as it felt like an automaton or a metronome was counting down the beats to my finale. “Green eyes, white hair, red suit, friendly smile. He has ruddy cheeks and big hands, big feet, and big teeth.”

 

“... Yeah?”

 

“What was your spirit animal?”

 

“Some kind of burrowing thing. I had an orangey snout. It was kinda cool.”

 

“... Most likely a fox then. I don’t know what mischief your Spirit might get you up to, but that Legend is going to get you killed. Make your peace with it, Ladron.”

 

I flipped him off. “Blah blah, ‘ _ You’re gonna die! _ ’, blah blah, ‘ _ I told you so! _ ’. What-”

 

“In fairness, I did tell you so.”

 

“Quit trying to feed me bullshit, Dorset, I know danger when I’m in it.”

 

“Do you now?” He asked blandly.

 

I had a funny feeling I was in it. “Something about this whole thing means I’m not on your side, doesn’t it?”

 

“Yup.” Professor Dorset blinked lazily and picked his ear with a finger to show dominance. Or to be a prick, whichever.

 

“Ah… So… Should I go do drugs now, or…?”

 

“Well…”

 

“I’m not leaving this classroom alive, am I?”

 

The smile on his face made me wonder why I even bothered to leave my coffee on my desk. “Why, Ladron, whatever would give you that impression?”

 

I turned to run, but my two steps only carried me far enough to make it hurt more when I fell to the deafening, horrific bass that blaring from Dorset’s desk. I could’ve sworn my eyes were vibrating, let alone my bones. The experience was nauseating to say the least, and it wasn’t long before my previously delicious breakfast became significantly, unmistakably less delicious. Blinded, deafened, and effectively paralyzed, there was nothing I could do to make my situation any better or to stop the aches in my body from spreading and intensifying. To make matters worse, Dorset probably threw a paperweight or two at me, which caused an inordinately blinding amount of pain. I assume they were paperweights since he had a few on his desk, but I didn’t know for sure because I was too busy doing the bone-deep electric boogaloo. 

 

A few seconds or minutes into what one might call the world’s most intense seizure, Professor Dorset himself came over and said some things to me that I couldn’t make out, mostly because I was hearing plenty of things at the moment. My vision started fading after the first blow whatever it might’ve been, which was kind of lame. I expected to get kicked three or four times, then have a villainous monologue play out before someone I knew or didn’t know swooped in to save the day, but you know what they say about expectations and the ones you’re supposed to have of bad guys. Blacking out was nice because it meant that I was taking a nap, but waking up from getting knocked out is never fun. At least it wasn’t the last time I did it, and that was good enough for me to make a general assumption.

 

Outside of my secondary worries, like my aching sides and head, there were a couple of primary concerns that I had with my situation after I came to. Namely the fact that I was bound and tied to a desk that looked like it had come straight out of a high school movie from the eighties. My imagination took a backseat to a feeling of irritation, which was odd because it really felt like I was about to be tortured to death and people generally have a hard time accepting that. For some reason I just had a hard time believing that I was in any real danger until I looked to my left and saw a small folding table with many,  _ many  _ sharp things either stuck into it or laid across the top. Quite a few of the pointy bits had some dried ketchup on them, and when I looked at the floor around the chair, I saw that someone must have loved their ketchup a little more than your average Joe Blow. It didn’t take a genius to know that my personal ketchup was about to be tasted if I didn’t figure something out, so I did what seemed natural in a man-versus-man survival situation.

 

I kept my mouth shut.

 

In the movies, people always mess up by letting their captor know that they’re awake in the most obvious, loudest manner. While not being a movie buff, I figured that the poorly lit, finished basement I found myself in probably belonged to Dorset or whoever he was working for. I couldn’t see any cameras or anything from where I was sitting, and my wrists and legs were bound to the chair with zip ties, so I was feeling a little hopeful about my current circumstances. Wasting time seemed like a good way to get stabbed until I died to death, so I stopped doing that and started gnawing on the ties. If they’d been thicker I would have been a lot more worried about the possibility of getting out in time, but with that not being a factor I took my time as I needed and bit through the first one after a couple of minutes. The second went by faster, but that didn’t help me with my legs at all.

 

Luckily for me, my wrists are twigs and my ankles are still tree stumps from morbid childhood obesity, so Dorset had to use rope to tie my legs down. Untying my bonds couldn’t have felt any better at the moment, and it wasn’t because the left kot had been a little too tight. No, this bird was born to fly, and you can’t fly with the bonds of The Man holding you down, man! Whereas Dorset was the The Man, I was the guy with no compulsion to be even the slightest bit nice when it came to my escape. My captor had been unwise enough to leave quite a few people-pokers on the torture table for me to counter attack with, but just  _ stabbing  _ someone seemed like it was out of my wheelhouse. After all, I wasn’t really the stabbing type, having grown up in Strawberryville, so I did the next best thing as far as I was concerned and took one of my socks off. After filling it with nuts, bolts, and the occasional piece of scrap metal, I gave my makeshift flail a few test swings and saw that I would probably knock myself out just as fast as Dorset if I came across him.

 

Now that I had a weapon and half a plan, I started calling for help like I was confused and weakened, which I was. It was just that I was less confused and weak than I pretended to be, and when I heard the faint sound of laughter coming from above me, I had the funniest feeling that I’d just goofed. The mostly barren walls of the basement offered me little to no protection, and there was nowhere to hide other than under the staircase. I wondered how I was supposed to survive my current situation since I knew that Dorset would see that I’d freed myself soon enough, so I did the only things I knew I could do and grabbed a really sharp looking thing from the assorted coercion utensils before hiding under the aforementioned stairs.

 

Dorset stomped his way down one stair at a time, his gait indicative of the fact that he’d been waiting for me to wake up. The thought crossed my mind as he started coming closer, his footfalls echoing over my head as I prepared my own little surprise. Each time he stepped, I could practically feel my muscles tense up, my adrenaline surging. Every move he made was echoed in the beat of my heart, and when Professor Dorset’s right foot came down on the step in front of me, I struck, lashing out with the pokey-thing to start off. He collapsed under his own weight once I pulled the thing out and I wasted no time in exiting my hiding place, scrambling over the rickety railing, and swinging my flail into Dorset’s fearful arms as he tried to defend himself. The first gut-wrenching crack was accompanied by screams; one from Dorset full of pain and shock, and the other from me, carrying the tone of my desperation. The second blow was lighter than the first to me, but my former professor seemed to be equally worse for wear after it along with the second, third, fourth, and so on until my muscles locked up. 

 

Both my sock and Dorset were unrecognizable, and that was pretty brutal to ‘wake up’ to. I realized that I’d ruined the pair of hemp socks my Aunt Frankie had gotten for me before I got to the murder portion of my plate, and I was honestly more upset about it for a little bit. Not long, but long enough to make me completely and totally doubt whether I would ever be okay after killing someone with my own two hands, being covered with their blood and bone and probably eye juice. I didn’t want to think about it that hard, but it was either that or trying to make my arm stop locking up which wasn’t happening any time soon. After like, three seconds of looking at the remains of Professor Dorset, I looked up and saw that the door to the stairs was closed. A piece of me wanted to immediately make a break for it, but something in me made me wrench the flail out of my right hand so I’d actually have a chance of using it for what I had in mind. After a trip to the stabbed stand, I returned to Dorset with two of his own tools. My right arm was still mostly useless from muscle tension, but my left arm was fine and dandy to put a spike through Dorset’s heart and head. Once I’d done that I felt like I was safe to leave for some reason, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. Less thought was given to why I did it as to what it did and I stepped over Dorsets unmoving body toward non-ketchup stained silverware and bludgeoned people. 

  
Honestly I don’t even know if it  _ was  _ ketchup in there… Could have been barbeque.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's a belated chapter three that I would've posted days ago, but forgot when the last update was. LEt me know in the comments what the update schedule should be, whether it's Weekly, Biweekly, or Whenever I get shit done. As of right now, I'm writing at the speed of life, which is to say I plug in 500~1k whenever I can and try to make something cohesive.
> 
> As Always, Stay Cool, Kids


	5. Maxim Gregorovich

Chapter Four: Maxim Gregorovich

  
  
  


The other side of salvation was another chamber, and the side I’d come from held a dead guy and a torture dungeon (Or sex dungeon, whichever), so I kept on keeping on and got the fuck out of the basement.  Walking up the stairs to the first door showed me that I wasn’t the first person Dorset had locked down there, various skulls in different stages of decay being impaled from neck to pate on metal stalagmites. The basement had been pretty dank and dark, but I almost missed it when I smelled rotting flesh and spoiled blood as it was everywhere around me. The adrenaline from earlier had worn off and was replaced by the drive to live past the situation I found myself in, as lethal as it seemed. Leering at my new surroundings showed me quite a few dead heads and a good number of doors that all lead to similar staircases to the one I’d climbed up. The third to last door I checked held a staircase going upward, so I hedged my bets and followed it to what I hoped would be a either a shower or a phone.

 

Much to my dismay, the cracked plaster of the walls and rusty metal of the new staircase just lead me to the next level of Hell, which turned out to be a warehouse. I assumed it was abandoned since there was like, no one there and I didn’t hear anyone when I exited the second staircase. With the scenario of possibly being murdered by something I couldn’t fight bashing its way to the forefront of my brain, I crept around the shadows I could keep myself to while I searched for an exit in the shadowy, lit up structure. It must have been day time outside since the light filtering in seemed to be daylight, but I didn’t want to assume just in case there were street-lamps outside breaking the doom and gloom. Instead I made sure to look around at the lower concrete and upper metal walls. There was no way for me to reach one of the high windows, so that plan was out. Even then, if I could’ve reached the windows, it might’ve been a longer fall off of the other side than it would’ve been on the inside, and the windows were already at least a story and a half high.

 

With that not being an option, I continued to skirt around the main floor of the warehouse and eventually found the door outside, though I doubted that it was the one that Dorset used as it had been pretty well stuck by some rust. As little as I wanted to stop and think once I got outside and into the murky, foggy darkness of the late, nearly moonless autumn night, I needed a plan since I had no way of communicating with someone and no way of knowing where I was. In the end, the result of my think-sesh was just to pick the brightest line of street-lamps and follow them them wherever they were willing to take me. Me being paranoid as hell and now infinitely more likely to stab someone for no logical reason, I stayed out of the light of the lamps and kept an ear out for anything that might have stuck out. Beyond the sounds of the abandoned industrial complex, as in rats and groaning metal, there wasn’t much to hear. Of course there was eerie background music in my head that wouldn’t go away, but no monster or psycho to run from in sight. It was a little disorienting.

 

There were definitely chills running up and down my spine as I exited the main gate from the area, not once looking back after I crossed the threshold of the place that had very nearly been my final destination. I just wanted to get home and find someone to hold me for a little bit so I could get a little sleep, but I doubted that my night was going to end so pleasantly. It didn’t take long for my walk along the barely-lit path to become tedious and arduous, my body aching for the caffeine I generally fed it twenty-four/seven. For the briefest of moments I took pleasure in the fact that I wasn’t addicted to anything other than caffeine and music, but the second I thought about my nearly soundless existence, I grew even more weary and just wanted to get home as soon as possible.

 

Step after step, one foot in front of the other saw me in a ghetto that I’d rather have not been in, but it still seemed better than getting tortured to death. As I walked, I got a couple of hollers from some fools with nothing better to do, but I paid them no mind and kept going until one of the frick-faces decides to rush me. Apparently he thought better when he saw that pretty much my entire shirt, arms, and a good portion of my face were all still covered in blood. Then the guy actually got really nice and lended me the biggest helping hand I could have asked for at the moment: A shower, something I won’t mention, and some of his Aunt’s home cooking. Nick the Dick (His words, not mine) and his friend Ty were both cooler than the Popsicle Man and both were ungodly at Black Ops, but I was mostly worried about the fact that I was basically on the opposite side of town as to Curtis.

 

Ty offered me a ride for some gas money, so I borrowed his phone and used my bank app to send him twenty for gas and fifteen for expenses since the dude had been nice enough to just give me one of his own shirts to wear so I didn’t walk around looking like I’d ‘gone and caught a fuckin’ body’, or whatever it was that he said. I understood what he said, don’t get me wrong, I just can’t remember what exactly it was. After a dose of herbal sleeping medicine, Nick negotiated with his girlfriend to let me crash on his couch, which was comfy. I got a solid eight hours of sleep and woke up disoriented and halfway out of my mind, as evidenced by the unflattering video Mikayla, Nick’s girlfriend, got of me flailing about while twisted up in some blankets. I took the laughs as they came since perspective had taught me that there were worse things in life than to be laughed at. After all, I even got a chuckle out of watching the video when I disassociated and thought of the man in the video as someone else.

 

Around noon, Ty gave me a ride back to The House, so I gave him a couple pieces of my knife collection and a cup of Kona as thanks. Having made a couple new friends after losing one of the coolest professors on campus, I went into the living room for the first time in I couldn’t remember  _ how long _ and just sat down. I knew that I’d had work earlier and that I should’ve been at school, but I just needed time to decompress and process what the bloody hell had just happened. I’d been assaulted and kidnapped by one of my all-time favorite teachers, nearly tortured, killed a guy to death and a half, escaped confinement, walked through one of the worst areas of Philly and made friends. Now I was back home, my pants and shoes still covered in Dorset’s blood. It was all so… s _ urreal _ , I suppose one could say. It was all a different beast, a different challenge than my mind was used to. Algorithms and matrices made sense. Scores and notes made sense. Murder and torture?

 

Not in my frickin’ life, no siree.

 

I don’t know how long I sat and spaced out, but it was long enough for Shelly to come, try and get my attention, and then successfully get it when she saw that I was still a little bloody from earlier. “Fuckin-  _ Holy shit! _ Ladron, what the hell, dude? Are you okay!? The  _ fuck!?  _ You’re like-”

 

I shook my head to clear it and saw that Shelly and Logan were standing in front of me, concern and alarm painted clearly across both of their faces, invading their body language as well. “You wouldn’t fuckin’ believe the night I’ve had.”

 

“ _ Night!? _ ” Shelly asked in disbelief. “Dude, you’ve been AWOL for like,  _ fifty hours _ at this point! Logan and I were just in the kitchen talking about calling the cops since you weren’t answering your phone and no one’s seen you since like,  _ Tuesday! _ ”

 

“Ah. Damn.”

 

Logan sat next to me slowly. “Ladron… Son, are you…?”

 

Shelly bit her thumbnail, a habit I’d never seen her take part in. “La-La… Are you using?”

 

I stared at her blankly. “Using what?”

 

She snorted and dropped her chin suddenly before throwing her head back for a laugh., “Aw hell, I can’t believe I just asked if you of all people were chasing the dragon!”

 

“Nah, but I did hit a blunt a couple times.”

“You what.”

 

For a long moment, I looked at my quasi-girlfriend and then traded my gaze to the man who was like an Uncle to me. Neither of them seemed like they would understand, but I didn’t want the burden of being a murderer to eat away at me, even if I was still a little shocked. “... Yeah. I kinda needed it to sleep.”

 

“Ladron…” Logan trailed off.

 

“Sweetie, what are you mixed up in?” Shelly interrogated, her tone firm.

 

“Torture. No, wait, murder. I didn’t get tortured, murdered someone so they wouldn’t torture me. Kind of freaking out about it now that I’m talking about it with people I actually give two shits about, holy  _ shit _ .” I breathed, not having taken a breath for the entirety of the rambly sentence. “ _ God damn! _ ”

 

Shelly’s jaw dropped and she came to sit on my other side, putting her hand on my leg. “Sweetie… Did you kill Professor Dorset?”

 

“Is he missing?”

 

“Since afternoon yesterday. His wife called the school and there were some people asking around about him at school this morning…” 

 

“Well, in my defense, he totally kidnapped me and had me ziptied to a sketchy chair in a sketchy basement with a pretty convincing table full of sharp metal shit that I doubt was stained in ketchup. Barbeque maybe, but not ketchup. Hell, if it was barbeque, then Dorset was full of barbeque sauce.”

 

Shelly covered her mouth. “Ladron…”

 

I felt Logan’s hand on my shoulder, so I turned to look at him, his face set in stone. “I knew Dorset pretty well. Any reason he might wanna do something like that, because that doesn’t sound like Larry.”

 

For a lifetime of a second, I wondered if I could tell Logan that I wasn’t completely sure why Dorset had turned on me, nor was I certain that I could tell him about the only hypothesis I had. Caution was my best bet, so I said, “I went to his class to talk to him and he said that we were on opposite sides.”

 

“What?” Shelly asked.

 

Logan raised his chin, his hand creeping into his pocket. “He say what he meant?”

 

“It’s complicated, but no. He basically just hit me with something that made it hurt to exist and I just passed out after a little bit. I don’t really know  _ why. _ ”

 

“Wait, so  _ he  _ attacked  _ you  _ first?” Shelly asked. “Dude, why didn’t you just go to the police?”

 

I pursed my lips off to the side. “... Because I’m still waiting to wake up.”

 

A loud thud and a heavy fist to the back of my head assured me that I wasn’t dreaming. “Wake up, buttercup.”

 

“Logan, what the hell!? Ladron just almost got kill-” Shelly started to argue, but before she could get her full steam, her eyes rolled up into the back of her head. I assumed it had something to do with the odd song that was currently playing. I could hear ‘ _ Rest now, sleep now, wait til dawn to kill the cow’ _ , which was not encouraging.

 

I turned from Shelly to Logan and saw that he was glaring at me with a Derringer in his hand, pointed directly at the bridge of my nose. “Let’s take a walk, La-Loner.”

 

“Rather not.”

 

“I can clean you up in here or in the shed. I just don’t want to have to clean you off of Shelly.”

 

“... Man, I just want a nap. Can I take a nap before I die? Like, y’all been tryin’ to kill me for no fuckin’ reason-”

 

“What’s your Spirit?”

 

I had to think about that for a second, my mind not comprehending the question at first. “Um… An aminal?” The look he gave me jogged my memory rather quickly. More of a sprint, honestly. “IT was a fox. Definitely a fox.”

 

“And your legend?”

 

“Big ol’, buff white-haired grandpa in a red pimp-suit.”

 

Logan stared at me, then put his gun down. “Do you know who that is?”

 

“Not Santa, apparently.”

 

“That’s Gregorovich. Maxim Gregorovich.”

 

“Never heard of him.”

 

“Of course not, he’s an even more modern Legend than most. The fifth anniversary of his death was this year, around the end of Fall Break.”

 

“... What?”

 

Logan took a deep breath and stowed his mini-pistol. “You don’t have a mean bone in your body, Ladron. I’m sorry for the gun, I just needed to make sure that you weren’t… Well, Gregorovich has a history. A lot of modern Legends do.”

 

“... Okay, man, you’re gonna have to explain this whole ‘:Legend’ thing to me. Are you trying to say that people like fuckin’ Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny-”

 

“Not the rabbit, Jesus.”

 

“... Were you-”

 

Logan rolled his eyes. “I literally mean Jesus was a Legend. He was one of the most, if not the most, powerful healers of all time. The guy was the reason that cancer didn’t show up until the eighteen hundreds, and the thoroughness of his blessing kept AIDS at bay for even longer. Just imagine what damage a Legend like Stalin could do.”

 

I gave him an odd look. “Mother- Did you just compare  _ Jesus Christ and Joseph Stalin? _ ”

 

“I’m already going to hell for witchcraft, Ladron.”

 

“That’s a fair point, but still. What made Maxim-”

 

“Gregorovich. Don’t say his first name unless you want me to shoot you.”

 

“ _ Damn. _ ” 

 

“I know it sounds harsh, but that guy was behind nine/eleven. And the nuclear meltdown in Japan. And shit, when he was young, Chernobyl. His teens? Sparked the Cold War and almost got the Cuban Missle Crisis off the ground. You wouldn’t believe just how much Gregorovich did in his life against the betterment of the world as a whole, and I know you aren’t aware, but it’s a holiday in the VF Circle now. That’s a part of the reason I threw that party last Sunday when everyone was back from Fall Break.”

 

“... Okay,” I said slowly, “so my Legend is one of the worst dudes to have existed in the past hundred years-”

 

“The reason I brought up Jesus was solely so I could call Gregorovich the Anti-Christ.”

 

“ _ Bruh _ .”

 

Logan took an unnecessarily deep breath (From my perspective) and sighed, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I should’ve warned you about Vaux Faker. I’m sorry, Ladron, I shouldn’t have let it get this far.”

 

“Right. Thanks for that, but what the frick does any of this mean, Logan? So my Legend is a bad guy. What of it?”

 

“Your Legend, the Patron of your magic, is the most evil man the world has known since Babylonian times. How does that not alarm you?”

 

“I don’t know what it means, for one.”

 

“You can’t use magic without it most likely causing collateral damage, Ladron. If you invoke Gregorovich’s power with the wrong song, you might end up killing yourself and everyone around you. That man is a nuke with a fucking  _ visco fuse _ .”

 

“No wonder I should be dead. Too bad I like breathing.” I inhaled deeply to prove my point.

 

I earned a flat look for trying to bring some levity to the situation. “Son, I don’t know how to tell you this in any other way than that you might need to stop making music.”

 

“... What?”

 

“Have you made any Vaux Faker songs?”

 

“Yeah, on accident-”

 

“It wasn‘t an accident,” Logan sighed. “The power of a Legend shouldn’t be ignored. Someone like John Henry or Robin Hood would be no big deal, but Legends like Nero and Vlad the Impaler? They’re not generally happy with taking a backseat during your everyday life. I’ve seen people go insane from the backlash of their magic.”

 

“Because they didn’t know what they were doing?”

 

“Yes, but-”

 

“Then teach me, queer.”

 

He gave me a stern look .”It’s not that easy, Ladron.”

 

“I learn fast, and I refuse to stop making music. You can’t justifiably tell me to live a life without song, faglord.”

 

“I can, I will, and I might still shoot you.”

 

“Please don’t.”

 

He shrugged. “That’s more up to you than it is to me now. Either learn to live with never making another song or punch your ticket and get off the train.”:

 

“I choose Option C.” Which just so happened to be a quick chop to Logan throat so I could bolt, grab my car, and get into gear. I didn’t get shot at or anything, but it certainly did seem like a good time to go and get some new pants and shoes. 

 

Instead of doing what I wanted to do, I went to the Police Station to file a report. However, apparently Nick’s Aunt had already filed a report on my behalf since there was apparently a warrant out for my arrest. Me ‘turning myself in’ meant that I got decent treatment, but the holding cell that they put me in before I could get booked kinda sucked. However, once my prints were printed and my name named in the books, I was taken to an interrogation room and given a small cup of shitty coffee for my patience. It took a good while for someone to show up, though I don’t exactly know the amount of time since I both neglected to ask and never managed to find a clock. The officer who came in to talk to me wasn’t even a detective or anything: just a run of the mill fellow that wanted to go home and have a cold one. How I knew that, I didn’t know, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to question it.

 

As the officer was explaining that I was basically free to go since the blood on my clothes didn’t even register as blood, he asked, “What tune is that you’re hummin’? Sounds real familiar.”

 

“Didn’t know I was humming.” I said, furrowing my brow. “Sorry, haven’t listened to music in a while.”

 

He scoffed. “That your thing or somethin’?”

‘

“Music? Yeah, can’t really go without it, so it makes sense.”

 

“Right. Still, you know the song?”

 

“Sorry, sir, can’t tell you the song if I don’t remember singing it.”

 

“Fair point. Y’know, you seem like a real good kid, Gadai. What had you convinced you killed someone?” The officer asked, curiosity outweighing concern on his face.

 

Once he freed my hands, I rubbed my wrists and said, “... I don’t know, to be honest with you. It felt like a dream when it was happening, and I remember everything like it was a bad dream, but… it seemed so  _ real _ , I guess. It feels like a bad memory more than a dream.”

 

The friendly fellow put his hand on my shoulder and nodded. “... You wanna know what that red stuff was, Gadai?”

 

“Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

 

“Madder, Safflower, and a few other red dyes.”

 

“... Can I do a pee test?”

 

“That’s what we’re about to do, kid. Listen, whatever you want to tell me right now, I’m open. I’ve seen liars, cheats, murderers, and people who been backed into corners, and I think you think you’re tellin’ the truth. What really happened, Gadai? Where’d you go Tuesday afternoon?”

 

I looked that man dead in the eyes and said, “I went to my professor’s class after work and he used some kind of Jedi bullshit to drop me like a rock. I woke up about a day later in a basement, tied to a chair. I chewed my arms free, untied my legs, and grabbed something that I was probably gonna get tortured with and made a flail with my sock and some scrap metal. My professor came downstairs to the basement where he was keeping me, so I hid under the stairs and attacked from there. I stabbed him in the achilles before going at it with the sock. I blacked out for a little bit. Just kept swinging. I stopped when my arms hurt too much to do it anymore and I left the warehouse. Met some nice people. Got a shirt and some food. They gave me a lift back to my place. Figured I should come in and explain what happened before some unlucky fellow did, but I rather doubt anyone would check that part of town.”

 

The officer nodded a couple of times. “I’ve seen crazier shit, Gadai. I really have. It sounds like you might not want to hear what I have to say.”

 

“My butt doesn’t hurt though. And my mouth just tasted like morning breath.”

 

“Does Snoopy still work?”

 

“He never really got much exercise in the first place, so that wouldn’t be much of a loss.”

 

“Good, I guess,” He said awkwardly, patting my shoulder. “So… You’re Gregorovich’s new… Boy?”

 

“Do what now?”

 

The fellow frowned. “Don’t play dumb, kid. I know bullshit when I hear it. You’re among friends here at the station, believe me.”

 

I sighed like the weight on my shoulder had been lifted for a moment, then dropped back down on me from an unfortunate, cruel distance. “Sir, with all due respect I don’t know much about the guy. I just want to make music in peace, but it really doesn’t seem like that’s gonna happen.”

 

“... Holy shit, Logan wasn’t lyin’.” He cracked a smile. “Glad to hear that the Grand Ol’ Bastard ain’t in your head. I heard the last girl he was in ended up killing her family and jumping off of a bridge with her nephew in her arms”

 

My jaw dropped. “...”

 

“Oh, don’t worry about that! That bitch was crazier than a fox anyway. That’s what happens when Fox Types get mixed with bad Legends.”

 

“...” 

 

He stopped smiling. “...  _ Fuck off. _ ”

‘

“Maybe it’s an orange badger?”

 

“... It’s a red fox?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

The Officer rubbed his chin. “Hmm… We have an Auror slash Soothsayer here. He might be snootier than an anteater, but he’s good at what he does. I’m gonna leave you here, okay?”

 

“Can I have a bagel?” I asked.

 

“How’d you know we have bagels?”

 

“I didn’t, but I figured you guys like bread without centers. Uncrustables must be like silver to you guys.”

 

“Just for that, I’m dipping your bagel in water.” 

 

“Aww, come on!”

 

“That’s what you get for being a smartalec.”

 

“Me love you long time~” I offered.

 

“Now you’re not getting one at all.”

 

“Tis better to have loved-” The look he gave me made me shut up.

 

While the officer was gone, I got up and stretched my legs as well as the rest of myself. Everything was aching at least a little, so it felt amazing to get it all loosened up. However, the next person to come in came right as I was stretching my hamstrings, so I bolted upright and nearly fell over. With my face flushing a little, I turned to see an auburn haired, middle-aged detective looking at me with little to no amusement in her raised brow. I raised a finger and inhaled in preparation to say something, but then she tilted her head forward ever so slightly, her tight bun keeping her hair from at all. The simple gesture made me shit up and sut down. Wait, no, I meant shut up and sit down. Yeah, that.

 

When I saw, she approached the table and made no move to take a seat for herself. “Do you know who I am, Gadai?”

 

“No ma’am.” I answered, trying to choose the wisest path.

 

“I’m Detective Winnfield. My father was Detective Jules Winnfield.” She waited for me to reply, but I had nothing to say to that. “No comment? Okay. Maybe you’ll be a little more understanding when I say that Gregorovich, your Legend, coerced Gina Hatter into killing her entire family, including extended relatives. Even one of the children.”

 

“I’m… Sorry? Ma’am?”

 

She narrowed her mahogany brown eyes at me, her warm, cinnamon complexion giving her stare another layer of heat. “No you’re not. It had nothing to do with you. Don’t lie to me.”

 

“Now I’m sorry.”

 

“Yes you are, and now I think I got a decent picture of you. You’re just some dumb mulatto-”

 

“The fuck are you then? Tex-Mex?”

 

“You high-yellow-”

 

“Hey, if you wanna bust out the racial stuff it can go both ways.”

 

She smiled. “Yeah, but you touch me and you get locked up.”

 

“You touch me and I find out how to ask  _ Maxim _ for help.”

 

For the richness of her skin tone, she paled considerably. “Damn, you play hardball.”

 

“You threw the ball, I just gave it back.”

 

“Fair enough. You know you’ll be dead before you even get a spell started, right?”

 

“ _Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-_ ** _DONG!_** _Hark hear the bells, something as well!_ ”

 

The look on her face was priceless. “... Why are we even worried about you?”

 

“I honestly don’t think y’all understand just how little I actually want to use magic. I just want to know about it. Same reason I study history, honestly: it’s just a thirst for knowledge.”

 

“Knowledge is power.” Detective Winnfield pointed out.

 

“No, electricity and oil are power. Knowledge is  _ money _ .”

 

She got a laugh out of that. “Just don’t let the money talk for you, Gadai. You seem to have a good head on your shoulders.”

 

I shrugged. “I guess my parents only had a few marbles left over when they put me together.”

 

The Detective rolled her eyes. “So who’d you claim to kill?”

 

“Larry Dorset.”

 

“Mmm, I can understand why. He’s our custodian.”

 

“ _ The fuck? _ ”

 

“Yeah, the BBBCKFH Group-

 

“The what?”

 

“The Canadian/American Legend Alliance. CALA for international purposes.”

 

“It should be CALA in the first place,” she glared at me. “... Ma’am. What does the full acronym stand for, anyway?”

 

“Pecos Bill, Daniel Boone, Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett, Billy the Kid, Mike Fink, and John Henry Group.” 

 

“ _ Dayum. _ ”

 

“Damn is right. There’s a lot of Legends that all have different gifts to give, and your Legend has next to no gifts worth getting,” Detective Winnfield said resolutely

 

“Right.”

 

“Do you want to know who my Legend is?”

 

“Someone who didn’t like Gregorovich?”

 

“Fink. Brawler. His songs are telling me to beat you into a bloody pulp.”

“Damn. That’s… That’s rather unfortunate. Why are you being so bipolar?”

 

“Because that’s how Finks and Mongoose Types work. We’re the best in a brawl, and our intuition is impeccable.”

 

“And your intuition is telling you to kill me?”

 

“No, it’s telling me to punch you until you learn your lesson.”

 

“I haven’t done anything!”

 

“ _ Yet. _ ”

 

“Don’t say that! I lead a very quiet life!”

 

“Sure.”

 

“That’s offensive!”

“How so?”

 

“You expect me to get up to trouble just because of things I have no control over! That’s profiling!”

 

“Shut up, Gadai,” Winnfield barked.

 

“Yes ma’am.” I withheld any comments about how well I thought we were getting along.

 

“For the record, you smashed a golem. Dorset’s been dealt with for attacking you unprovoked, but don’t assume that means you’re safe. Next time you get into trouble, you better hope the laws on your side.”

 

“Ma’am, Detective, I never wanted any of this. I just thought I could fix broken records, or make grass grow a different color with music. I didn’t think it would get this hellish this fast. Honestly thought I’d have to make a lot more bad decisions to get this far.”

 

“Nope. You just have some really bad luck, Gadai.” She nodded and shrugged. “Still, you’re free to go in a few. You’ll be under Markkson’s custody until you graduate. Then from there, we’ll talk.”

 

I almost started nodding along until it registered in my mind. “Wait, you’re giving me a lifelong babysitter?”

 

“In essence.”

 

“Gross.”

 

“Deal with it.”

 

I raised a brow. “Do I have a choice?”

 

“Not if you want to live,” She said frankly.

 

“Great. Now I have to deal with being a kid while being an adult.  _ Whipee. _ ”

 

She shrugged. “At least you’re not being tortured.”

 

“... That’s a very fair point.”

 

“Yes, yes it is. Take it easy, kid. It’ll get easier.”

 

For  _ some  _ reason I doubted that, but for the oddest of them all, I was convinced that I wasn’t done with the magical world of music. However, when my wallet and phone were returned to me, it was made clear that the police force would be looking for me to mess up at any given point in time. Knowing that I had watchful eyes waiting for me to slip up with the slightest move made me paranoid, and the general implication that I was going to have to make my music in secret made me even more anxious. There was little that could make me step out of line while I was being watched, and knowing that I was going to be watched for a long time meant that I prepared myself to settle in for a quiet life. Minus the quiet part, of course. There was nothing, no one, and no power that I knew of that would stay my hands from creating more music, but if that meant I had to go analog? Possible, just not preferred. As long as I could keep the music playing, then all would be well.

 

At least, that’s what I thought until my center console started buzzing on my way home from the station. I pulled over after a couple miles because it was consistently buzzing as if it were getting a call, but I figured that it would have stopped if it were a phone. When I got the time and chance to open up the hatch I found that it actually was a phone making the thing vibrate, but it sure as hell wasn’t mine. I would never buy an Apple product for any reason whatsoever, even if some of the included audio apps are superior to what Windows usually has to offer. That being said, the iPhone that was in the console had its LED flashing, signalling that there was a call. Being half sane and completely weirded out nearly made me throw the phone out of the window, but something else inside, something with big teeth, big hands, and a big, big thirst for vodka (Or human blood. Whichever) made me pick the phone up and put it to my ear, the voice on the other end being a familiar one, despite me never actually hearing it alone.

 

“Hello, Mr. Gadai.”

 

“... Gregorovich. Weird to hear you without you singing.”

 

“I’m sure it is, Ladron,” He chuckled jovially, like we’d just shared a joke. “From now on, I’ll be reaching you from this device. You may have noticed that your fellow Attuned-”

 

“Fellow beg pardon?”

 

“Ah-ha-ha! Of course you’ve never heard the term. My apologies, Ladron, allow me to explain. An Attuned, or rather  _ the  _ Attuned are people that are ‘synched’, shall we say, to the sounds humans can’t hear, the songs of the natural and unnatural worlds in unison,” Gregorovich sighed happily. “Da, it’s a beautiful, chaotic symphony once you truly begin to listen, but for the time being, you shall borrow upon my strength.”

 

I inhaled to reply, but couldn’t find the words. “... Mr. Gregorovich-”

 

“Please, are we not partners? Comrades? Call me Maxim.”

 

“Would you mind if I called you Max? It’s-”

 

“Maxim will do if I may call you Lad.”

 

“... Yeah, I actually kinda like that.” I really did. ‘Lad’ with a thick Russian accent sounded hilarious. “You know, for a real life super villain, you have a lot of charisma,” I pointed out.

 

“Bah! Maxim Gregorovich has  _ never  _ been a villain! What your peers fail to realize is that a man makes mistakes in his life, but is he defined by his failures, or is defined by his ambition? My goal was to bring the world together under clean energy, to eliminate the nuclear deterrents from the equation, to humble the world’s superpowers. Does this make me a rebel? Yes. Does it make me an anarchist? A little. Am I a bad man? I  _ defy you _ to prove that I am!”

 

“Hey, man, I don’t have any problem with you. I mean, I don’t know you, personally, and you’ve been pretty chill so far. There's that little thing about Gina, though.”

 

Maxim made an angry noise. “Her mind was too weak for the melodies I discovered in my studies and experiments. Yours? You are bright. Grounded. Your mind is strong and flexible, as you have proven by defeating a golem made for the purpose of information extraction. You, Lad, are the only one that can truly wield the Gregorovich brand!”

 

“And if I don’t want to?”

 

“Ah, then I just kill you. The moment you picked up the phone, you became  **_mine_ ** .” Gregorovich started chuckling, nearly rising to a cackle before he reined himself in. “I kid, I jest, you are and will forever be free to do as you please. The only thing I ask of you is that you die a bloody death when the magic becomes too much.”

 

I squeezed the phone a little tighter, my eyes staring straight ahead as my breath caught in my lungs, coming to me in trembling gasps. “... I woke it up, so I have to use it.”

 

“Yes, very astute, Lad.”

 

“And if I use it, then the cops are gonna crack down on me.”

 

“Most likely.”

 

“But they probably already knew that I needed to vent or I’d die.”

 

“It’s better to have just you explode than to have you be the next me, I suppose,” Maxim chortled, his breath coming slow and heavy.

 

“So the cops want me to die, you want me to…?”

 

“I want you to  _ fix. This. World, _ ” he replied, enunciating carefully.

 

“... How?”

 

“We Legends once walked the Earth, just as you, Lad. What gave us providence over people?”

 

“I... have absolutely  _ no _ idea.”

“Hm. Maybe you’ll learn, maybe you’ll stay in the dark. Maybe you’ll be the next modern Legend?”

 

“I get the funny feeling that we’re done talking.”

 

“We are, but feel free to ask your question.”

 

“You’re not going to directly teach me how to utilize magic, are you?”

 

“What fun would that be?” He asked pointlessly, as if he could have possibly thought that I’d find joy in trying not to die.

 

“It’d be plenty of fun. Blow something up, make a dick bigger, put some tits on a tree. You know, magic shit.”

 

“... That’s… That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.”

 

“Then how  _ does _ any of this work?”

 

“Read about it. It will most likely be in your device.”

 

“And where exactly did this cancer thing come from?”

 

“The phone?”

 

“Yeah.” I tapped the back of it absentmindedly.

 

“Is it cliche to say that it has always been there?”

 

“ _ Hella _ .”

 

“Legends generally do not understand slang.”

 

“Very.”

 

“Ah. In that case, it appeared after you ‘Synched’ or ‘awoken’ to Va Faxar.”

“Can I get Va Faxar for two hundred please?”

 

“Vaux Faker, as you young ones call it. I could digress, but that is the level Valiar Faxinus’ art has been reduced to in these times.”

 

“Ah, okay…” I didn’t know how to take that. “So Bryce Ulbrich needs an asswhooping.”

 

“I believe so. Is there anything else you would care for me to explain? I do not like communicating through devices.”

 

“Just one more so I don’t waste your time. What  _ is  _ the device, and what’s its purpose?”

 

“The device is an instrument from your time period that is most commonly carried. Once upon a time, devices were guitars or harmonicas, and in other lands whistles, erhus and the like. The device’s purpose is both as a communication tool and a weapon, both of which are well under its capabilities.”

 

“Okay. Should I save any more questions for next time?”

 

“Ask and you shall receive.”

 

“How would this thing be used as a weapon? Would I just play songs from it?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Ah. And how-”

 

“You communicate with it in different ways. Some devices required you to play a heartsong, which is a person’s own identifier, or speak someone’s name and play the instrument as loudly as possible. Which action you needed to take often depended on the era.”

 

“Cool… So… I think that’s it. Have a good one, Maxim.”

 

“I wish the same to you, Lad. Do be careful of who you trust from now on. If you must reveal your legend, then say that you are the disciple of Rasputin. At least he is not hated.” Maxim’s advice seemed pretty solid.

 

“Yeah, sounds good to me. Much thank.”

 

“What?”

 

“Thank you.” 

 

“Ah… Much luck?”

 

The call ended there and I pulled my phone away from my ear, not realizing that I’d been dripping small beads of sweat as I’d been talking. Whether it was from my heater being on or the intensity of my discomfort, I didn’t know, but I still needed to get back home so I could get my life back on track. After all, the world was still turning, despite the fact that it was flipped on its head with its privates waving about in the air from where I was standing. The drive home wasn’t that long, but I was quite distracted anyway. I just… It was hard to deal. I’d killed someone without killing them, but something about that just didn’t seem right. Everyone was telling me that the source of my magic was evil, but that didn’t seem quite right either. Maxim was telling me that he was a different kind of man, but even then I had my doubts, despite having seen no signs of malice in him when I’d met him. In fact, he was nothing less than cordial, which isn’t something someone generally associated with evil Russian world-domination-type folks.

 

The drive back gave me plenty of time to think. Too much, actually. It would’ve been nice if my phone was charged enough to play a couple of non-magical tunes, but I dealt with it for the time being and chilled as much as I could with the iffy radio music that was playing. When I got back to the house, Logan was waiting for me outside on the porch, so when I pulled to the side and parked in my spot, I wasn’t surprised to see him approaching me just about as fast as his little tree-stump legs would carry him. I  _ really  _ didn‘t want to deal with my new whatever he was supposed to be, but soon enough I was out of my car and he was as close as was polite.

 

“Things are gonna be different around here, Ladron.” Logan said firmly.

 

I stared at him. It took a moment, but I felt it. I felt it well enough to use a little. “Touch any of my  _ shit _ and I’ll flay you and your little girlfriend alive. I’ll do her after I cut your hands and tongue off so there won’t be any nasty little surprises.”  As his face rapidly whitened, I leaned in. “Don’t.  _ Fuck. With.  _ **_Me._ ** I’ll beat you bloody. I won’t step out of line if you don’t  _ make me _ , Logan. We’ve never had a problem before, don’t _ fucking cause on _ e.”

 

“... Don’t think you’re tough shit just because of your Legend, Ladron. More powerful Legends than Gregorovich have been killed before, and you’re not a Legend.”

 

I gave him a smile. “ _ Maxim _ and I have an understanding. I vent a little bit of my magic weekly and he doesn’t drive me insane. You want me to  _ detonate _ myself, then I can do that. That’s the only thing I actually  _ know  _ how to do,” I bluffed brutally, seeing the fear in Logan’s eyes, “and I’m not gonna die alone, so you tell me, Logan; are we going to teach me how to responsibly use my power, or are we going to make me get to my wits end and become a terrorist?”

 

“... Goddamn, you’re fucking  _ insane! _ ”

 

“No, Logan. I’m desperate. I’m really,  _ really  _ desperate.”

 

We stood there in the moment, a forty-something year-old man looking at another his by half, being given an ultimatum from a fox with its back against the wall. My little move could be tilted, completely overthrown if Logan simply called my bluff. Seconds turned to minutes, a minute into an hour. The longer we mulled over what had been said, the more certain I became that Logan was going to kill me then and there.

 

“... I’ll teach you.”

 

“I’m glad you see reason.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe it's crap, maybe it's gold, I'll pen the ink and do as I fucking want, this shit doesn't have to rhyme.
> 
> As Always, Stay Cool, Kids


	6. There's Jokers in The Deck

Chapter Five: There’s Jokers in The Deck

 

Gregorovich had made his point in subtle ways. We had many enemies and I either could choose to believe what people were telling me, or I could see for myself just who ‘the most evil man in modern history’ was. To say that I was conflicted was one thing. To say that I was panicking was another, because I was so far beyond that. I’d never been wone to have panic attacks outside of being lost without music, but even as I paced around my room and did every little thing I could think of to calm down, I had no success. Everything I composed sounded awful, everything I heard sounded like it was grating on my nerves, and I just couldn’t for the life of me get a grip. When my Aunt went through her bout with her mental health, she was a hot mess, and I was feeling much the same. I remembered her calling me a couple of times just to talk when I was in high school before she moved to the U.K. for some odd reason, and it seemed like a good time to follow in her footsteps and try my support network for a little peace of mind.

The first person I thought to call was Dustin, but it was too late in the day for him to be home, especially on a weekday. Dad was the second person I thought of, but I had no idea how to explain any of what was happening to him, so I chose the only other person I knew was into the shit before I hesitated to send my message. An ominous, foreboding feeling overtook me and I stayed my hand before I realized why I was feeling so tense: there was background music. Chilling, creepy, eerie background violins that made me wonder if I was well and truly going insane and if my multiple viewings of Shutter Island had been a signal of some sort. I was pretty much about to start bashing my head into a wall or solid object of any kind for a little peace of mind when I got pushed, throwing me off of my rut. In my haste and generally stressed state, I almost cocked back for a punch before I laid eyes on Marissa, then Shelly shortly after.

“La-La? You alright there, buddy?” Marissa asked, her tone a little odd.

Shelly didn’t seem to pick up on it. “Dude, you look like shit, and you need to explain why Logan sounds like he’s been hit in the throat. He’s saying it’s your fault.”

“I fed him some cocoa and ghost chili coffee beans and they went down the wrong pipe, apparently,” I lied smoothly.

Shelly narrowed her eyes at me. “Liar.”

Not so smooth after all. Instead of lying again, I said, “He got a lesson and hopefully it’ll be the end of it. As for why I look like shit, maybe… I… I don’t really have an answer.”

“It’s not like you to lie over… Well, anything, Ladron. What’s going on? What’s stressing you out so bad?” She persisted, her heart stitched to her sleeve.

Honestly, if was anyone other than Shelly, I wouldn’t have even thought of trying to say anything. However, the lethal, predatory glare Marissa shot me and the ‘I’ll slit your throat’ gesture were plenty enough reason to go with another, more feasible lie. “It’s… It’s a Z thing.”

Confusion crossed both women’s faces at the same time, but Shelly actually knew what I was talking about. “Wha- Oh. Oh! Dude, you know you can trust Rissa.”

I glanced at the plucky ginger and saw that she was giving me a smile fit to beat a bat with. “... Right. So… I’m Zephyr, right?”

Marissa smiled like an idiot, but I now had a ‘Wolf in sheep’s clothing’ vibe from her. “You mean like the musician?”

“Yeah.”

She stopped smiling, and for once in my life I actually paid attention to her. Every little detail about the promiscuous woman, everything from the angle of her resting lips to the frequency of the freckles that dotted her face. At face value I saw a girl who liked to party, who might have been the High School sweetheart turned spicy after the Swedish Fish left her little pond. In her bright, cheery green eyes, however, something just didn’t sit right with me. The more I thought about it, the more I remembered never having seen Marissa smile with her eyes. It wasn’t a big deal or anything, but it was certainly odd, and it played a key factor in me trusting her from that point forward.

“Ladron?”

I snapped back to reality, the gravity of the situation bringing me back down to earth. “Ten-four good buddy, copy that.”

Shelly looked at me like I was crazy. “... Marissa asked if you had any proof that you were Zephyr.”

“Ah. Right. Yeah, I can prove it, but I don’t give a fuck about that. What I give a fuck about is not being able to make music.”

Her jaw dropped and she covered her mouth. “You have… Writer’s Block!? You!? Of all people!?”

I glared at her to sell the act, though we both knew it would take more than that for me to toss a sour look Shelly’s way. “Don’t rub it in. I’ve been running myself ragged just trying to put two damn notes together and I can’t even get a beat that sounds half decent.”

“My man, all of your beats are great! That being said, why don’t you take a break from music for a bit and just focus on the crap you have to do for school? I mean, you practically treat music as a second school day and another part-time job. You need a break, La-La.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Marissa said brightly. “Party in Shelly’s room!”

The ladies grinned at each other before turning to me. “So, what do you say?” Shelly asked. “Are you gonna make us be all lonely, or are you going to stop being a hermit?”

“Hermits wouldn’t leave their cave. I leave my cave.” I defended quietly.

Shelly’s smile fell slightly. “Hey, I didn’t mean to offend or anything-”

“What? No, I’m not offended. Halfway in my head. Sorry.”

“... Have you even listened to music today?”

I shook my head. “Nothing sounds right.”

Apparently that was a cause for concern. “Well, maybe I could play something I’ve been working on for the past couple of years for you? I wanted to call it Lonely Stone.”

“I’m not lonely-”

“Are you sure?” Marissa cut in. “I mean, I’ve never met anyone who spends so much of their time at work and at home, especially when they have a school life. College is a time to get wild, Ladron, what’s holding you back?”

Instead of answering right away, I let my mouth hang open before closing it, looking between my best friend slash kinda girlfriend and her off-and-on paramour. “... I need to go talk to Freddy.”

Shelly shook her head slowly. “You’re not buying dabs.”

“Why not?”

“Yeah, Shells, why not?” Marissa asked, giving her a certain look.

Shelly cut her a stern glance. “Because I’ve never even heard of Ladron smoking weed, let alone going straight to dabs.” She turned back to me. “You’re not going to Freddy’s, and even if you try, I’ll just drag your ass to the ground!”

I raised a brow at her. “So you can do it, but I can’t?”

“That’s the gist of it,” my difficult girlfriend replied.

“You know how I feel about double standards.”

“And you know how I feel about you… Well, I guess you didn’t know, but now you do! I want you to stay out of that kinda crap, Ladron. It doesn’t make you the right kind of friends.”

“Hey! We met over a joint!” Marissa objected.

Shelly pointed at her. “Smoked a reefer cigarette with this one and she won’t stop eating my ass.”

“You said you love that!”

I closed my eyes and pursed my lips. “Okay, now I’m picturing it and it’s not as gross as I thought it’d be.”

Shells blinked. “... So…”

“Does that mean you’re open to being our third wheel?” Marissa asked excitedly.

“Sure,” I answered eloquently. “Just let me know.”

Shelly’s frown deepened just before she glanced at Marissa. “Would you mind if we talked real quick?”

The ginger seemed a little off-put, but not upset. “Sure thing, Shells. Ta-ta, La-La!”

When Shelly turned back to me, Marissa raised a finger to her lips before dragging it across her throat, a clear sign to shut the hell up about magic if I’d ever seen one. After she left, Shelly was in my face. “The fuck is actually going on here, Ladron?”

“I’m dry,” I said morosely.

“... I’m not buying you alcohol if you have a prob-”

“Shelly, I haven’t put a new song out in two days, nor have I been able to even start one. The well’s dry, Shells.”

She stared at me. “Would you be more upset if music stopped sounding good or if I died?”

“In fairness, music has been there for me my whole life.”

“Yeah, I’m truthfully not even offended. I think I understand now.”

“You do?” It was a surprise to me.

“You care more about music than you do about graduating, getting laid, or eating in general, don’t you?”

“I expect to graduate, I’ve never had that high of a libido, and eating gets tedious.”

“Goddamn, you are…” Shelly stared at me for a long couple of seconds, making me very uncomfortable. “Well, why don’t we try and spark some inspiration? I can lay down a beat and you can come in with whatever feels right.”

“If anything felt right about comping, I’d be doing it right now to be honest with you.”

“I know, which is why you should let me help you! I know we’ve done digital, but we’ve never done acoustic!”

I blinked at her, lyrics forming in my head as she spoke. “Holy beach I find myself; silver sands that color melts, golden paint upon skin and bone; you hold my heart upon a throne.”

She beamed and grabbed my hands. “Hallowed ground on which I walk; A hundred miles for a simple talk, best-friend, boyfriend, and brother make three, incest was not the point of. Theet. Um…”

There were immediately doubts in my mind as to whether or not someone could have actually not laughed at that. “I’ll come up with the lyrics, you make the song.”

Shelly blushed, which was adorable on her pale-tan cheeks. “I- You- Well, maybe… Um… I got nothing. That was pretty bad.”

“Hallowed ground on which we walk, go miles and miles just for a talk; even if you were undersea; I’d make the trip, so my point must be, that I lo~ove you. That I wa~nt you. That I ne~ed you to be by my side, my ride-or-die, my sour little mochi baked into a pie!”

We both giggled and snickered at the cheesiness of the second verse, but I was honestly feeling better about the whole ‘Magic is real and it’s trying to kill you passively’ thing. I couldn’t remember at the time, nor was it important, but I think the kiss Shelly and I shared at that moment was our first as a couple, unofficial as it was. I couldn’t have cared less if it was the first kiss or the thousandth: no woman I’d ever met or made out with had lips like Michelle Aiko   
Gaul-Akaishi. Dear Lord above, did that woman just… I mean… I need a thesaurus, be right back.

The rapturous, forgiving softness of her non-vaginal labia (Labia oris, for those concerned) was simply, utterly, and completely euphoric. Before when I’d kissed girls and women in my past, they usually came with a feeling or smell that made the experience distinguishable. For example, Kara made me feel hot and uncomfortable, so I didn’t really enjoy kissing her, whereas the pecks and smooches I’d traded with the only girlfriend I’d had in high-school smelled like cinnamon and syrup half the time. Shelly, however, came with both an indescribable feeling and a lovely aroma, courtesy of thousands of cups of tea that had passed over the teeth and through the gums, each cup leaving a slightly similar, but ultimately different note. I couldn’t put my finger on the specific scent since it was definitely a form of jasmine, but the specific type was unknown to me. I labelled it as ‘Dragon Pearl’ since that was Shelly’s favorite kind, and leaned into the kiss a little more, pressing my lips more firmly against hers as she carefully looped her arms around my neck as if she was afraid of strangling me, or offending me in some way. When her breasts touched my sternum, all I could think about was being closer to her, to know her further, to absorb all I could from the moment so I could look back on it whenever my life was to flash before my eyes so I could say ‘Damn. That makes it all worth it.’. My heart fluttered in my chest, the beats so light and frequent that I could have traded places with a hummingbird and not have known the difference. In all my twenty-odd years, I’d never felt as complete as when I finished a song I could be proud of. At least, not until I kissed Michelle.

I let my hands rest on her waist as we simmered, the moment warming and cooling as we broke apart just to meet again at the same point, something inside me pushing me to hold Shelly close and just not let go. My mind could barely process conscious thought at the moment, the entirety of my brain power being devoted solely to remembering the experience. As with all good things, the kiss came to an end with a bittersweet symphony (Just orchestra, not the song) playing in my ears, the songs of my life not freaking me out since I wasn’t paying attention to them at the moment. Indistinct, vaguely classical music was playing and it sounded rather nice, but my attention was wholly devoted to a pair of circular pieces of Tiger’s Eye with Onyx inlaid into the centers. It’s cliche beyond the dashing hero saving the damsel in distress, but I couldn’t drag my eyes away from Shelly’s, my subconscious telling me that she was it. That I needed to shape up or ship it on out. That if I couldn’t have her, then I wouldn’t want anyone else.

“Hey, Ladron?” Shelly asked quietly, her voice hushed like she’d snuck me over while her parents were home. “I… Do you remember when we met?”

I inhaled, my breath a little shallow. “Um… At freshman orientation while senior year was still going on. How could I forget?”

She smiled a little, barely curving her lips. “What else?”

“You and I hung around the back of the group with BB and those other girls that were talking too damn much. We started chatting about our instruments and favorite kinds of music. I was Baroque Pop and Grunge Metal while you went with JRock and Hip-Hop. You said your favorite rapper was Nas, but your favorite lyricist was Rakim, which threw me through a loop because Nas was my favorite lyricist.”

“And?”

I blushed and looked down because the next thing I remembered was embarrassing, but the thing it pertained to was fine to talk about. “You were wearing this knife-pleated shirt and some kind of tye-dye blouse that was visually louder than a Daft Punk concert-”

“Knife-pleated shirt? You mean skirt.”

I nodded and smiled awkwardly. “I-It was cute either way, but I don’t really get why you’re asking me all this.”

“Because I want you to know that I’ve had my eyes on you for a while, and it’s not just because you’re the small-towner kind of cute. There’s something about you, Ladron-”

“Call me Max.” I said automatically, not even thinking about it.

“Isn’t that your middle name?”

The implications of what I’d just requested of her hit me like scrap metal in a sock, which is to say it hit hard and left some scratches where it landed. “Maxwell, but yeah…”

“... I’ve literally never heard anyone call you Max other than your Mom when she came for Parents Day.”

“My Aunt Tasha calls me Max.”

“I feel like someone else did too. If it’s an ex, we can just not talk about that.”

“No, it was my sister.”

The perplexed expression on her face was familiar. “You have a sister?”

“No, I had a sister.”

“... Oh.”

It hurt, but I still smiled. “She’s not sad anymore, and this is a really depressing topic, so let’s just carry on and say that I caught a glimpse of something with Kuma print on it during orientation.”

Shelly opened her mouth before it hit her. “... You looked up my skirt?”

“I have three kinks and that’s one of them.”

“That’s… So you’re a voyeur?”

“I’m an asstronomer.”

She pushed her lips to the side of her mouth and looked at me worriedly. “Don’t tell me you have mirror shoes…”

I furrowed my brow. “Why would I have mirror shoes?”

“I’m not telling you because I know you don’t have them.”

My face flushed again once the accusation landed. “Hey, I just happened to be walking up the steps behind you and the wind picked up! It’s not like I was crawling on the ground to catch a peek!”

“So… I’m sorry, but I don’t get upskirts.”

“I just like the feeling. And undies. A cute slash sexy pair makes the woman.”

“Okay, so when want sex, I should come in here with a skirt and some nice panties?”

I felt even warmer in the cheek area, so I said, “I guess…”

“Alright, so upskirts are one of your kinks. What else?”

“Why are we talking about my kinks?”

“Because I just had one of the best kisses in my entire life and I want some action. That’s why.”

“Oh.”

She winked. “Wanna hear one of mine?”

“Um… Yes. Yes, I should know these.” I nodded firmly.

“Well, I won’t tell you my biggest fetish, but my favorite is Frenching.”

“French kissing?”

“Yup.” She licked her bottom lip and bit it, giving me a saucy look. “Your turn.”

There was a lack of supplies in my brain. Oxygen and the blood that carried it were rapidly draining from my cheeks to another, equally obvious place. “Uh… stockings?”

She tilted her head. “Stockings.”

“... Yeah? Is… Is that weird?” I asked tentatively, feeling exposed for some reason. 

Shelly giggled and my heart dropped like a piece of gold in baby oil. “Oh my God, if you met my Mom, you might cream your pants. I don’t think that woman’s gone a day in her life without stockings or pantyhose.”

“Right…”

She smiled brightly. “So what is it about them that you like? I know you don’t have a foot fetish.”

I inwardly gagged, then thought of foot odor and did it outwardly. “Ew, dude. And second, no, I like stockings because they make a woman’s legs and thighs look fucking tasty.”

Her smile dimmed and weakened. “Ah, right.” She looked down at her own legs and pursed her lips.

When Shelly looked back up, she snapped in my face, my eyes having followed hers. “Hello? Earth to La- Er, Ma- No, I’m calling you Ladron. La-La Can I help you with something?”

“... I think this might be the first time in my life that I actually want to see a woman naked.” I whispered.

“Hmm?” 

“I… Er, well… I…” My tongue quickly found a way to loop itself so that the more I thought, the tighter the knot got.

She shrugged. “Is it my turn to-” I nodded as she spoke, trying to hurry her along. “O-kay. Well, I guess my second fetish would be being grabbed. Groped, I should say.”

“You mean like… In public, or…?”

“No, just in general. I mean, yeah, in public sounds really hot, but I just like to have my boobs and butt grabbed, y’know?”

“That just sounds like a turn on, to be honest. It’s pretty normal.”

The face she made almost caused me to feel bad before she said, “Not when I want it to be a surprise.”

“I feel like you’re talking about… Er, ‘con non-con’.”

“It’s not like that! I don’t wanna be snatched up by some stranger, just a little teasing!” Shelly defended in harsh whispers, her face brightening as mine did earlier.

In an act of spontaneity that was unusual for me, I grabbed Shelly thiccness with both hands and squeezed for dear life, her eyes shooting open seconds before her lids lowered and an enticing little moan escaped her lips. “My biggest thing is kinda embarrassing…”

“T-Try me,” she replied huskily.

“... Inverted nipples.”

Shelly seemed surprised. “Oh. You mean innie nips?”

“I guess.”

“Nipples that don't look like normal nipples.”

“Yeah, but not because of large areolas.”

“Or thick nips. I know what you’re talking about. It was a good reason for me to kick a couple guys to the curb before they got too far.”

My mouth suddenly felt dry all of a sudden, as if the moisture in the room had been drained. I licked my lips and asked, “... Are you trying to say something?”

“I’ve never met a guy who actually liked my nipples.” she said, making a face. “I mean, if it was anyone other than you, I would think you said that just to get some.”

“What else could I say that would get me some?”

Shelly rolled her eyes and huffed out a chuckle. “Plenty, but I’m not worried about you-”

“Your hair is magnificent, did you do it yourself? Your butt looks great in these jeans, by the way, definitely gives you a bombshell vibe. Babe-alicious. Bodacious. Downright calipygean, if I may say so myself.”

Shelly leaned back a little. “Uh… No, I had Marissa and Nicole help me with it. Nicole has a trick for bleaching black hair and Marissa just wanted something to do… Are… Are you trying to fuck me?”

“I’m trying to nail you like a stubborn two-by-four, yes.”

“So you’re asking me for sex.”

“Yeah.”

“... But you never asked Kara for sex.” Shelly said slowly.

I nodded patiently. “I didn’t like her like I like you.”

“Dude, Ladron, seriously,” her voice went flat, like she wasn’t amused at all.

“Am I not allowed to ever want sex?”

“Do you actually want it, or are you just saying that because you know that I do?”

“You’re sexier than Kara, Shells.”

“The fu- That Debbie D-cup having, toned booty-ass, girl-next-door- Boi. Are you out of your damn mind?”

“... I’m dating you, aren’t I?” I tried weakly.

“That would’ve been funnier if you delivered it better. Stay right here, I’ll be right back.” Shelly dashed out of my room, leaving my door wide open for all of thirty seconds before she ran back in with a smallish box in her hand. “And I’m back! Did I miss anything?”

I opened my mouth to ask what the hell she’d been doing and why she’d been doing it, but instead said, “Can you turn around real quick? Just for like, five seconds.”

She gave me an odd look, but still complied. When she did what I asked, I walked up behind her and seized both of her breasts, the foamy cups of her bra hiding the softness of her mammaries. “Mmm, I could do this once or twice~” she cooed, shifting her hips around in a way that drove Ladron Lite crazy.

“I could do this all day,” I murmured into her ear, her warmth and general energy soothing me while riling me up at the same time. It was an odd juxtaposition, but it was definitely one worth having my heart broken over to experience.

Shelly tossed the box onto my bed and laid her hands over mine. “Mhmm. Why did you wait so long to make this happen?”

“Because you have to be retarded before you can be smart.”

“Are you sure?” She giggled. “It sounds more like you have to dig through trash before you find something worth keeping.”

“Wouldn’t that make dating like a garage sale?”

“More like an estate sale, but yeah.”

“... So what would that make me?”

“Well, seeing as how I’ve been trying to get you to go out with me since day one, I would say I’m the old coffee mug that you glanced at a few times, but never realized how perfect it was until you picked it up.”

“Damn, you are pretty perfect for me. Especially since you know what analogies to use.”

“I’m pretty sure that was a simile, but I get what you’re saying.” She made me let go and spun around, giving me a quick peck on the lips that was followed by another, less hasty kiss. That one was succeeded by another, and then another until the conversation was well and truly over. 

Now, if I were a cruder fellow, I might have spoken on what Shelly and I did with the little box she grabbed, but I think saying that they were condoms is enough to give one the mental image they need. I might like to think of Shelly’s perfectly round, big, bouncy-yet-firm bottom and the way she blows her hair out of her face with a well practiced gesture, but I don’t believe anyone else needs to be thinking about that. However, I will say that I well and truly enjoyed my hour and twelve minutes with Shelly, even through the afterglow. I’d never actually enjoyed coitus with someone until her, and it was most certainly an addictive feeling that I looked forward to having again. In fact, that very hunger for more intercourse was what made me last longer than a measly five minutes, though that may have been because I was actually having fun for once.

As my recent consummation of my relationship fell into the past, I realized that I had work in a few hours, still had to see what I’d missed in classes, and now needed to find out what kind of connection Marissa had to the magical world on the other side of music. Meanwhile, I took pleasure in ignoring all of that to relish my time with Shelly since I knew moments like the one we’d just had would be few and far between. Hell, even the songs that were now playing in my head reminded me of love songs and ballads of the heart, all waiting to be sung to my own little lemon dropping. I say lemon ‘dropping’ because Shelly’s the shit, and I also like lemon drops, so it works out.

Once Shelly was off of my chest and sleeping peacefully in my bed, I set an alarm on my clock for around an hour prior to her first class and took my happy ass to work for once in the past three or so days. I couldn't remember how long I’d been gone, but I knew Phoebe was going to have something to say about it, so I started coming up with a viable excuse. All of the ones I could come up with sounded really, really holey and stupid, so my next destination deviated from my set course and lead me to the police station so I could find Detective Winnfield and ask her if I could say I was kidnapped. After getting there and waiting all of ten minutes, I was asked to head to the Commissioner's office with a one man escort. It didn't seem like I was in any trouble, but I couldn't help feeling like something bad was going to happen. The music in my head was carrying on without a particular rhythm or vibe, so I took that to mean that I was in the clear and allowed myself to be directed to the place I said I was going.

The Commissioner's office looked just about like I’d expected it to. The room was spartan with a few proud pictures and news clippings framed on walls, a couple of desk toys, and a few pictures on said desk that pretty much made up the entirety of the non-essential things in the room. There was a mid-two-thousands looking computer perched upon the dark wood of the heavy-looking desk, but it was the man behind the computer that I wanted to know more about. For being a Commissioner, he really didn’t seem like Five-O. The fellow honestly looked like an old bouncer or body-builder instead of a cop, though it’s not like I’d known many cops or Commissioners to make a comparison. Still, when he stood, Commissioner Bronson was a giant of a man. I may have been six feet and a couple inches, but the man in front of me? Easily seven feet tall with a little room to spare. I couldn’t weigh him accurately, but if my somewhat muscled body could chunk up to two-forty, then I didn’t doubt that Bronson was every bit of three-fifty, if not more. The guy was just that big, and when people get that big, they tend to be intimidating. Most of the time it just meant that getting to his balls was easier with your fists than your legs. In Bronson’s case, I felt like the Silver Wolf was waiting for me to make a move, just so he could make my face a distant memory in both a literal and figurative sense. Literally by punching my beautiful countenance to the moon, figuratively by maiming me for the rest of my life. Wait… Oh, whatever. I was a little scared of the big guy, but I still had my Golden Nad that was a little tougher than the other.

“Hm. Ladron Maxwell Gadai. Native Irish father, African-American mother. No arrest record, no tickets, no fines, and no trouble with anyone in Troy as far as I know. Who the hell are you, kid?”

I really didn’t like how much he seemed to already know about me. Goldy got dented right away “Someone’s been doing their homework.”

“It’s not homework, keeping tabs on guys like you. That’s a full-time job.”

“It’s really not,” I replied uneasily. “Leave me be and I’ll go to work, school, and my house. That’s about it.”

“I know. There’re eyes on most of of the upper fifth percentile at Curtis since Magicians seem to gather there, regardless of they were born Attuned or Disarrayed-”

“Disarrayed?”

“Not in-tune with natural song. Ever since you Synched, you’ve heard two songs in every one, haven't you?”

I tilted my head. “That’s why everything sounds like shit!”

“It is. Most people learn to separate the layers as you grow more capable with your magicks and compositions, and as I’ve heard from Logan, it would seem that you’re eager to learn?”

“I am.”

“So you’ve spoken to Gregorovich?”

For a moment, I felt like my life depended on my answer. Honesty had rarely done me any favors in life, but I felt like it would’ve been considerably worse to lie. “... Yes.”

“The conversation?”

“A meet and greet. Basically him promising me powers beyond my imagination.”

“Have you ever watched Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I used to love that movie. Edmund was a dumbass dickhead.”

“Right. Don’t be like Ed and trade your soul for some ‘sweet’ things. Gregorovich will give and give until he snatches everything you’ve ever had from you, Ladron Gadai. You may have heard of Gina Hatter?”

“He said she just couldn’t handle his power,” I answered, perturbed.

“That’s because Gina was like a kitchen faucet trying to hold back the Hoover Dam.” Bronson barked. “Every Attuned is born with a different Score, another word for ‘capacity’ in our world. If your Score is small or low, then using your Legend’s original compositions might very well kill you.”

“... How do you learn the size of your Score?”

“Write a song with your instrument of choice and see how many notes are in it. The more pure the feeling behind the song, the more accurate the Score reading.”

“What if I already l know the average amount of notes I put into analog songs?”

“Why would you know that?” The Commissioner asked confusedly. “Actually, nevermind. What’s your Score?

“Uh… How do you measure that?”

“Have you composed something with notes?”

“No shi-” I remembered who I was talking to, not even needing a proper 

“How many measures were there?”

“Uh… When I still did analog, there were usually two hundred to two-fifty measures.”

“Then your Score would be- I’m sorry?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Son, did you say two-fifty?”

“... Yeah?”

“... Was the song in sixteenth notes in six-eighths time?”

“No, I was in a pretty experimental phase before I got Fruity Loops down. I think it was ten-fourteen.”

He clutched his heart, his already ghostly white face seeming to turn ever paler, as if he could survive without blood in his head. “... Christ mostly-almightly…”

“... Sir?”

“... You weren’t born into an Attuned or even Synched family… How- I don’t…” He pushed his chair back from his desk with his leg, stepping away from me in the same motion. “Son, how about I make you a proposition?”

“I’m all ears, sir.”

He nodded a few times. “Quit the coffee shop and work here. I’ll train you. Here. If not me, then my wife, Meredith. All you have to do is promise me, as in oath to me, that you will never use your strength to harm others.”

I nodded. “Got a bible?”

“Your family isn’t religious.”

“I am.”

“God may or may not be real. The oath I have you swear will be more binding than any contract with him anyway.”

“Okay. How do I oath?”

The Commissioner reached into what I assumed to be an inside coat pocket and pulled out a harmonica, just like Maxim had mentioned. He played a series of notes that made an odd sounding song, my tongue feeling like it was coated in aluminum foil. In my mouth it felt normal, but the muscle itself just didn’t seem like the one I’d been born with. “Repeat after me: I, Ladron Gadai, of stable mind, body, and soul...”

“I, Ladron Gadai, of stable mind, body, and soul…” 

“Swear to Alan Bronson that I shall never cause harm…” He waited for me to repeat it again.

“Swear to Alan Bronson that I shall never willfully cause harm to or against an innocent person without magic, regardless of their hostilities toward me. Is that good?”

“... Well, it’s more reasonable than my request, I suppose.”

“Right? I’d like to be able to defend myself.”

“Fair point. Now that you’ve sworn the oath, go quit your job and get your ass back here with eight cups of decaf, seven cups of normal gas, and a couple dozen donuts. Chop-chop.”

“... You realize my other job doesn’t make me do bitch work, right?”

“It’s called ‘grunt’ work, and you’re a grunt.”

“I’m a suicidal grunt who doesn’t want to have to do errands for no reason.”

Bronson rolled his eyes. “Everyone’s depressed these days, son-”

“Not everyone is willing to die along with as many people as he can take with him. I only really give a shit about one person in this entire city, Chief, and I’m pretty sure being blown up wouldn’t hurt her at all.” I said, bluffing my ass off like you would not believe. Or maybe you would. You literally did just read me saying that I was bluffing.

The Commissioner, however, didn't take the bait. “I’d be worried about that if you weren’t oath-bound.”

“You’re not innocent.”

“I am to you.”

“You’re essentially blackmailing and press-ganging me into joining your team against what I believe is my best interest.”

“So?”

I smiled at him. “I don’t consider you innocent.”

“Point being?”

“Who decides what the clause means for the oath? You or me?”

“... Fuck.”

“Play nice, Alan. We can both walk out of here happy.”

He pulled a gun on me, finger on the trigger, no hesitation in his eyes. “Why should you live?”

“Because Maxim wants me for some reason. I know that much just from talking to him. He chose me as his sole heir or whatever, so I must be some kind of special, right?”

“You just have a large Score.” Bronson snorted. “He’d be after anyone with a Score like yours.”

“How many people do you know with one like mine?”

“... That’s a point. That’s not a reason not to kill you, though.”

“Teach me instead of making me go to Gregorovich and you get to keep an eye on how I’m doing. I’m sure that the Police Commissioner is a pretty decent judge of character, so wouldn’t it make sense to keep the live ammo close to home where you can find and use it rather than leaving it in the streets?”

I could tell after a few seconds that I’d persuaded him to not make a mess he could easily cover up, but that didn’t lessen the tension in the room. “... Quit your job and come back. I’ll call Merry and have her start your training.”

“I’ll bring what you asked for, since you were so polite about it.”

He nodded and with that, I left, my tail wagging proudly and my butt adequately unkicked, so I considered the start to my day to be one of the best of the year, despite being threatened with death like it was Shoot ‘em Up Sunday. Before I got out of the station, a female officer stopped me and led me back to a photobooth-ish thing so she could take my picture for an I.D. The picture was terrible, as I expected it to be, but it named me as an Honorary Deputy of Philadelphia County, so that was pretty cool. It even had holographic decals and official type stuff, so it was pretty cool. I had to ask the officer what authority I had with it and she gave me a quick rundown of my ‘powers’. In essence, I could ‘arrest’ someone, but not without plenty of probable cause. That was about it. I was basically an average guy that could call the cops on someone and detain them until help arrived, but other than that, it was basically just a pretty piece of plastic that made me an official part of The System.

As I hopped back into Lisa and prepared to take off, I decided to try something. My phone was hooked up to my cassette player through the adapter, and the sound quality was pretty awful, but it worked for what I wanted it to do. At Once came through my cars speakers, though I listened more carefully then than I ever had before. The song played the first few notes, and then another song started playing underneath that one, as if it had been expertly layered to begin and end without causing any real ‘damage’, one might say, to the song. It wasn’t even that it sounded bad, it was just that the melody was different from any that I’d heard, and that in and of itself was interesting. With that in mind, I didn’t stop at just one song and played through my entire tracklist for driving as I meandered to Wake n’ Shake.

Izzy was at the counter when I walked in, though she was handling a few other late-morning orders while I bypassed her and went straight to Phoebe’s office. It wasn’t much considering the office I’d just been in, but the difference between the two places couldn’t have been any more obvious. Whereas Bronson kept things tidy and organized, Phoebe needed me to straighten out her office every couple of days, and it was pretty evident that I’d been away for a little while. It wasn’t that Phoebe didn’t like a clean workspace, it was just that she didn’t have time in the day to clean it up herself.

When I entered, I earned myself a quick smile, then a stern glare. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t-”

“A kidnapping victim. Yeah, that sucked. I miss anything?” I cut in bluntly.

“... Did- Did you just say you got kidnapped?”

I pulled my shiny new Deputy-thingy out of my pocket. “Catching the bastard got me a new job. I would give you two weeks notice, but it’s a ‘Quit now or forever hold your peace’ kinda deal.”

“I mean… I was... Well, I had a whole speech thought up for you but…”

“When have I ever missed work voluntarily?”

“Good point.”

I nodded. “So can I make a large order? I got a lot of thirsty and hungry cops looking for a fix.”

“Wait, are you saying that the Philly P.D. is ordering from my shop?”

“Well, I’m a part of them now, so yeah.”

“Woohoo! YES! I got the pig~gies, I got the pig~gies!”

I chortled at her antics, having forgotten all about her dream to be the ‘Cop-Stop-Shop’ that she never stopped mentioning whenever someone in uniform came around. It was a little sad when I thought about how it was probably so she could find a cute cop to date, but it was equally funny so I chose to let it be funny. Phoebe hooked me up with extra donuts and a discount, so I left Wake n’ Shake with a lot of shit that I didn’t plan on carrying into the Police Department by myself. I’m sure I pissed people off with my Sunday driving, but in my defense, I had thirty cups of coffee and three boxes chock-full of donuts to ferry, and I wasn’t trying to have to clean my car out again any time soon. Especially coffee stains. Just thinking about them makes me shudder.

Anyway, I recruited a young dude officer to help me bring in the goodies and earned myself some cheers from some people that I hoped wouldn’t shoot me. I didn’t know how many of the officers at the station actually knew of magic, but I did know that the middle-aged woman that wasn’t in uniform or official-looking clothes scared me more than Bronson ever could have. It wasn’t that she was menacing or intimidating: no, the woman was too matronly and short for that. It was the look in her eyes behind her smile, like she’d been to war, seen the elephant, and slapped it for crapping on the road instead of in the elephant potty. There was a hardness to her that I could feel rather than see. If she was going to be my teacher or whatever, then I needed to learn whatever she had to teach me, but that didn’t mean that I was going to do it because I wanted to. I would’ve rather learned from the guy who had been quite serious about ending me before I became too much to handle, in all honesty, because at least he had an air of reason about him. Once I stepped in front of Meredith Bronson, I felt like reason and logic bounced on their way out of the window.

She smiled as I came to her and I tried to smile back, but I’m pretty sure I just conjured up a worried grimace and had to call it a grin. Once I was within conversation distance, she extended a hand and said, “Why, hello! I’m Meredith, but everyone here calls me Ms. Merry.”

I shook her hand, her vice-like, kung-fu grip making my balls ache in fear. “Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Merry. I’m Ladron Gadai.”

“Ladron is such a lovely name, what does it mean?”

“I don’t actually know. My Mom said Grandma helped her come up with it, but I forget why she named me that.”

“Would it happen to do with your surname?”

“Gadai? I don’t know, why do you ask, Ma’am?”

“Because my Grandfather was Irish, and he taught me a lot of what I know. Gadai means ‘thief’.”

I raised a brow. “My Dad feels bad when he takes a good parking spot, let alone an actual thing.”

“What about you?”

“I’d rather buy whatever I want, that way I can be justifiably mad if it ever gets stolen.”

“Are you worried about your things getting stolen?”

“Well, a lot of it is music related, and music is my thing.”

Meredith gave me a frankly frighteningly friendly smile. “Well then, I believe we’ll just have the time of our lives. What do you say we go and get started?”

It’s not like I could have said anything other than, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh please, you can call me Mistress!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many questions, so little time


	8. Chapter Six: Revelations 2 2:20-23

Chapter Six: Revelations 2 2:20-23

  
  
  


“The first lesson when studying Sub-Audiology is how to use your device,” Mistress sang merrily. “This, of course, is something you are forbidden to do!”

 

I nodded respectfully, wary of another lash from her crop. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll barely even touch it.”

 

She tapped my head lightly anyway, the background music in my head crescendoing with the next little blossom of ‘ow’. “Good! Now that we’re clear on where we stand and what you can do, let me ask you something, will you dear?” She looked at me expectantly.

 

“Of course, Mistress.”

 

“What all do you think I’ll let you do?”

 

“Ma’am, I don’t have the slightest clue,” I said, already flinching a little.

 

The expected strike came and went, hurting just as much as the ones that had beaten me to my knees in the first place. “Oh, I rather wish you would be more creative, Ladron. No, I’m going to teach you the magical art of what you Americans call ‘Humming’!”

 

“Yes… Ma’am.” I replied, gritting my teeth and trying not to rub my aching head 

 

“Mhmm! Hmm-hm-hm, hmm-hmm hmm, hmm?” 

 

I stared at her. “Please don’t hit me again.”

 

She hit me again in the same spot. “Come now, Ladron, would I be so cruel?”

 

“No, Mistress.”

 

She beamed at me, her fading blonde hair and electric blue eyes giving her the air of a manic Nazi. “I’m glad you don’t think so little of me after all! Shall we get started, my new dear friend?”

 

I thought about giving her a simple answer, but the woman clearly had a different version of reality than the one I was currently living in. “... Yes Mistress, your humble friend is forever grateful for your time and patience.”

 

Mistress smiled again and patted my head with her hand. “Oh, you learn so quickly! We’ll simply have the best of times now won’t we, Ladron?”

 

“I’m sure we’ll have more than our fair share of educational fun, Mistress. I-”

 

“Fun? Yes. Educational? Most of it.” Meredith started strolling around me lazily, her short heels echoing in the barren, blackened concrete room. 

 

Other than a window thicker than your Mom, there wasn’t much to look at, and I didn’t dare let my eyes rest on Mistress too long, just in case she thought I was ogling her or hatching a plot. Normally I would have, but I doubted I could run far enough fast enough to get away from her, and I couldn’t gauge her reaction speed at all, so an attack was out of the question. Meredith Bronson slowed down in front of me every time she completed yet another circuit about my kneeling form. It was easy for me to avoid looking at her when she wasn’t in plain view, but the length of her dress, maturity, and general appearance was a very unfortunate distraction. By no means had Meredith made a clear or apparent effort to doll herself up. She left her hair down, the natural waves, highlights, and lowlights all texturing and blending together to set her up for being the buxom blonde, and she certainly didn’t disappoint. Minimal make up was my preference, and on Meredith, there was barely a trace of it, and what was there was tactfully and gently applied. I knew Shelly would probably want in on the action if anything were to happen, but I didn’t  _ want _ an early Merry Christmas because beyond Mistress’ good looks lie an anal-obliteration waiting for some sucker to say, ‘sure’.

 

I say all of that because my dumb-ass decided to risk looking at Mistress for the first time since she started walking around me, and my dick-head eyes were immediately glued to something that wasn’t her face. The booty was real, and it was  _ not  _ worth getting cropped in the face for looking at. “Ah, ah, ah! You haven’t even learned a spell and you’re eyeing the boss’ wife?”

 

While I tried to put the black back in me, I evidently took too long to answer because she struck my back. “ _ Fu-OW! _ ”

 

“Why, I would feel bad for you, but I can’t imagine what you could have been thinking of in that fuzzy little head of yours~ What if you would have done something…  _ rash _ ?”

 

Ladron Gadai backed down to no man. Meredith didn’t have fricking balls, and she had a lifetime of magic experience over me at the moment, so I said, “Mistress, forgive my insolent eyes and hear my thoughts and judge for yourself the…”

 

“Hmm?” She leaned down, a grin playing on her lips while her eyes reflected nothing. “Would you perhaps be thinking of ‘honesty’?”

 

“I was searching for veracity, but honesty is basically the same thing,” I squeaked.

 

“And your thoughts? Hmm?”

 

In my head, the soundtrack to my life had scratched as if someone had jerked the needle off the record, freezing me in place for a moment.  _ Bubba Sparxxx _ ,  _ Lil John, Eminem, _ and  _ Trace Adkins _ sprinted through my brain lobes with cleats, beat the think out of my hypothalamus, and glued my grey matter to the toilet seat after clogging it and breaking the handle. In other words, I was thinking of booty, hips, a set of thighs that told no lies, and the instant death I faced from Commissioner Bronson the moment any of that shit passed through my lips.

 

My mouth was a shitake mushroom and my tongue was fresh from Afghanistan. “At that particular moment I was thinking, ‘Holy frick’, and then I was thinking, ‘Stop looking’, which then did not happen.”

 

“Oh? I like that you censored yourself for my tender ears,” her eyes warmed for a moment, almost as if she wasn’t batshit crazy, “even if you were  _ ogling me. _ ”

 

I smacked my lips, nodded a couple of times, and hoped I didn’t die. Or get beaten again. “Can… Can you not kill me and... please tell my girlfriend that she’s the best person I’ve met on this poo-ball.”

 

“Is that all?”

 

I thought about it. “Hmm… HmmM. HmmMMmmhmm Umhmmhmm-”

 

“Stalling for time?” Mistress asked amusedly.

 

“Lmlmmm…” I closed my eyes and the song snapped into place, the room brightening while the melody repeated itself over and over- Ad infinitum, as it were. Apparently, the frigging humming I was doing was a spell. 

 

Mistress wasn’t smiling when I opened my eyes, though she could have been for all I knew. Her back was turned, so I had a face full of floral print on round mounds. “Would you look at that…”

 

“M-Mistress?” I asked softly.

 

She turned to me, her face finally honest for once. There was no smile; no more facade. Meredith was looking at me as if I was a legitimate threat. “You… You certainly are interesting, aren’t you?”

 

“I-I’m sorry Mistress, I-”

 

Meredith bent down to look me in the eye, but there was nothing there for me to read into or get a feeling from. I can usually suss out how someone’s feeling if I pay enough attention, but Meredith could kiss me or slap me for all I knew. Imagine my surprise when she asked, “Who do you belong to?”

 

“Uh…”

 

“That’s good. As your Mistress, you will be mine.”

 

“... Is that... Is that going to be fun?” I didn’t think it was, but I could hope.

 

“It’ll be as fun as I want it to be.” Her reply was flat, completely toneless. 

 

“Okay.” I tried to lean away from her, but something kept me from moving. Instead of doing anything, Meredith just stared at me until I opened my mouth again.

 

While she still didn’t say anything, she let her right hand rest on my cheek, her thumb on my lip. She began to hum something I couldn’t quite understand, but I felt the effects in my very bones, the pleasant, heavy feeling reminding me of nothing in particular. The aches I’d had from earlier were being soothed away, and I was feeling pretty good by the time Meredith stopped. Once her song was finished, she stood up and offered me her hand, so I took it while in a daze and got myself to my feet, nearly falling on Mistress since my knees were surprisingly weak. She held me until I could get myself sorted, but when she let me go, there was a certain kind of pain on her face, as if she was warring with herself over something. She placed her hand on my cheek again and her mask went on like it had been before, solid and incomplete as it was.

 

“That is all for today, Ladron. The spell you just used was a basic activation slash dispellation song. There are more powerful versions available, but that one will suit you for right now.”

 

“C-Could we cover a shield spell real quick, Mistress?” I asked tentatively. 

 

“That will be reserved for tomorrow’s lessons. For now, go rest and do school work. I expect you to have an original composition ready to share by the end of the week.”

 

“I-”

 

“One of your completed ones will do. I have decided your role, as is my right as your Mistress. Do you object?”

 

“N-No ma’am.”

 

“Good. As a Sub-Audiology analyst, you’ll be picking apart songs and putting them together for our men and women to use in the urban field. It would seem as though you do well in creating new songs and analyzing them, no?”

 

“Um… I really suck at song analysis, but I can copy one after a few listens…”

 

“Then perhaps I’ve chosen a touch hastily in my desire to get your career started. What do you excel at when music is involved?”

 

“... Making it? I have a couple of albums, an EP or two, and a lot of singles I’ve put out.”

 

“How many of them are Va Faxar?”

 

“Two, I think.”

 

“Hmm.” Her expression didn’t change much. “Do you have a way of playing these songs right now?”

 

“Yeah, my phone.”

 

“Send the files to my cloud and I’ll analyze them for you. Once we know what the songs mean, I will let you know whether or not you can use them.”

 

“Thank you, Mistress.”

 

“You’re welcome. If your songs prove useful, I will reward you.”

 

“Again, my gratitude knows no bounds.”

 

“As I would hope. You are dismissed.”

 

I didn’t waste any time in getting the fuck out of dodge, though I couldn’t really name one particular reason as to why. There were plenty of individual reasons that would most likely be perfectly fine on their own, but having them all together just made things unnecessarily complicated on my poor emotionables, so I decided to just be scared and go away before Meredith dicked me down or something. I never looked back, nor did I run because I knew Mistress was following behind me, the loud footfalls courtesy of her heels echoing in the barren room. After I was out of the PPD and into the city, IU took a little time to hyperventilate until I almost blacked out,m needing to pull ovewr for a little bit to clear my mind. After a quick hit from my stresserette pack that I kept in my car, I was smelly and ready to get back on campus. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Meredith had even more hidden depths to her than I could have ever imagined, but it wasn’;t something to dwell on for a sane mind.

  
  


I met up with Kel, a guitarist who planned on turning the Rock genre into something worth listening to again (His words, not mine), and we went to the first class of the day. He didn’t ask me many important questions, but he  _ was  _ surprised when I mentioned that I didn’t know who the new professor was. The way Kel described him sounded familiar. Another red-faced short guy was going to be teaching yet another class, and I was having my doubts on whether I’d rather be taught by a shouty ass-hat or a homicidal maniac. The answer was clear and easy to see, but that didn’t mean I had to be happy with Dorset’s replacement. It wasn’t until I walked into class that I saw my new professor, and it wasn’t even a full ten seconds before I facepalmed and found a seat, trying not to be seen.

 

Logan Markkson was barely qualified to teach kids how to finger a fretboard, let alone teach  _ me  _ a damned thing. At least, I’d  _ thought  _ he was just an alumni with a love for Philly. Once class started, it was pretty clear that Logan knew what he was talking about, maybe even more so than Dorset. The class was generally quiet and attentive during his lecture, which was odd for the afternooners. I blamed it on either Napoleon Charisma or magic because they each seemed equally likely. All in all, it was a good class and I felt like I wasn’t wasting my time, so that was doubly nice. I was sure to leave before the lecture was actually over, having someone Skype me the last five minutes so I could still learn and not get called out at the end of class. True to form, Logan asked for everyone to stay for a little bit so he could find me, but upon learning that I wasn’t there, he just dismissed everyone and life was good for the moment.

 

When I got home, Shelly was lazing around on the couch in the living room, looking like a zombie while digging further and further into  _ Destiny 2 _ . It looked alright from what I’d seen of it, but it just wasn’t my type of game, despite the graphics and free-roam aspect. Instead of sequestering myself away in my room, I sat next to Shelly and she immediately paused for all of two seconds to start cuddling and snuggling up to me, wrapping my arm around her so she could lean against me and keep playing. It was odd to be the one watching someone else play something for a change, but it wasn’t a bad thing by a long shot. Shelly was damn good, and that does mean that she had better reflexes and generally smarter plays than I ever could have. She was a natural with a controller in her hand, unlike Kara who would basically feed the enemy team points in between moments of adequacy.

  
  


Shelly eventually stopped playing for the sole purpose of trying to shove her tongue down my throat, thought that may be a bit of an exaggeration. The kissing was intense, but for once, it didn’t seem like something I  _ had  _ to do. It was like Shelly just… It would be hard to describe. I guess you could say that the moment we broke apart, the sight of her wiping her lips off and the sparkle in her eyes… I didn’t know how bad at the time, but I knew I was head over heels for my best-friend-come-girlfriend, and life didn’t seem like it could get any sweeter. Following the revelation that I was well and truly in love, I texted Mom and Casey, though I knew only one of them could actually read the message. I still liked to think that Case picked up the phone from wherever the afterlife spat her out, but I knew Mom would be happy on the living plane. It didn’t take her long to text me back a million emojis and a couple of letters that were probably supposed to be an acronym of some sort. I figured that she was happy, so that was that.

 

I wasn’t ready to tell Shelly what I thought since I wasn’t completely sure, so I pretended to be the guy with the brain and used the inspiration she’d given me to fuel my persuasive prowess, as weak as it may be. It barely took any convincing to make her give up on  _ Anthem  _ and come to my room for a quick recording sesh. We picked up where we left off with our lyrical brainstorming resulting in a Chillstep love song that was actually pretty fucking good. After the first full playthrough of the song, I was hooked. There was… The melody just… The rhythm just had this quality that… I can’t and couldn’t even describe it, despite hearing the song time after time after time. Shelly had sung her part perfectly and my mix just elevated it even more, the bass bringing her alto to the next level with its smooth, thunderous undertones and the sheer flexibility and range of Shelly’s voice.

 

Beyond the normal recording, there was another layer of song that wasn’t Vaux Faker or Va Faxar as far as I knew, just something I could cut from the song and play on its own once I isolated the pitch and sub-beat. It was something I’d only learned after coming to Curtis, and it was honestly one of my favorite things that I could say that I’d mastered. Then it hit me. After posting our song on Soundcloud and having it be put on the approval list for iTunes and Google Play Music, I shuttled Shelly out of my room with a parting kiss and made a couple of texts using the phone I didn’t l like touching. Maxim messaged back with the thing I’d asked for, specifically one offensive spell, one disarming/disabling spell, and one shield spell. In return for his knowledge and moderation, I sent him the song that Shelly and I had made, but it wasn’t enough, so I sent him the  _ Road to Redemption _ LP and sated his musical desire for the time being.

 

The spells he’d sent me were in pure note form, as in black and white to be read by me, not all over. Since it was just notes, I didn’t know what the fuck to do with them since playing the shield spell by all means should have erected a solid-light kite-shield for me to hold and not die with, so I asked Maxim and he told me to figure it out. Instead of doing that, I made copies of the spells on paper, put them in my wallet, then made sure that all of the evidence of me going against Mistress Meredith was as dead and gone as homo fishius, or whoever my most fishy-but-human-ish ancestor happens to be. Honestly, she’d probably pull some timey-wimey put-the-lime-in-the-wormhole-and-frick-it-all-up type crap that I really,  _ really,  _ _ really _ wasn’t trying to let happen. iPhones being inferior devices, I couldn’t safely take the damn thing apart  because I’d never bother to let one soil my skin when magic wasn’t involved. My resulting lack of knowledge meant that I was going to have to factory reset or jailbreak my device-thing sometime before anything could ping the exchange. I didn’t want anyone coming to dig up what

I’d just tossed out, so I did the only thing I actually knew how to do with an iPhone beyond basic stuff: Plug it in and let the games begin. I had the older model cracked within eight minutes, wiped the files from my hardrive in five minutes forty-two seconds, and shoved my device in my pocket.

 

Nothing happened. I’d expected something to happen. Anyone would’ve. I decided to shake my head and pull my hand out of my pocket with an oh-so wearisome sigh. Such misfortune. Much sad. So distraught.  _ Wow _ . The hand on my shoulder was gently resting as if there was a care not in the world for the owner of said hand, even as I about fricking pissed the stitches out of my britches when I felt it. I almost started convulsing my way into the afterlife before Marissa gently slapped me back into my regular self. After a moment to collect what little of my bejeebers had survived that  _ monstrous  _ assault, I gave my girlfriend’s slutty OMGBFF (Don’t tell either one of them I said that) a bland look. “Now that was a little rude. As old as I act, you’d like to gave me a damn heart attack.”

 

Her face scrunched up as I spoke. “... Who the hell are you and what did you do with Ladron?”

 

“Listen here, ‘Rissa,” I pointed at her and her eyes widened, surprised or something. “Ya’ll can’t just go sneakin’ up on quiet folk. One day you goin’ sneak up on the wrong fella and he goin’ eat your ass with a glass kitchenware set. Table-forks included.”

 

“Dude, you  _ fucking redneck _ -”

 

“Bitch _ , I’m a cannibal; you a fuckin' animal; chew you up, crush yo' ass right between my mandibles, can't stand a ho! Better step back before I lands a blow! Rap anotha stanza ‘cause my verbals finna fuckin’ blow! Step back and watch the show! Fuck yo’ punk ass jelly rolls! I’m unstoppable; diabolical _ -”

 

“Can you stop rapping? You’re not good,” Marissa said flatly.

 

I glared at her, annoyed and half-terrified out of my mind. “I rap better than your cherry-topped ass. Why are you in my room?”

 

“Your device pinged. Don’t fuck with it again or I’m fucking you up.” 

 

“Try me, Gingy.” My answer was little more than a grunt, but it carried the same weight, I like to think.

 

She slapped me before I had a chance to move, but it didn’t exactly feel like one of Meredith’s. “How was that?”

 

“Like you’re weak as fuck.”

 

This time, as I saw Marissa’s shoulder move, I ducked in and started forward, wrapping her up in a hug that I didn’t think was too tight. She struggled for a couple of seconds before she realized that I was just holding her, giving up pretty quickly. “... There really isn’t a mean bone in your body, is there?”

 

“I gotta be pushed way further than Joe Blow and John Doe, I’ll say that much.”

 

She patted my butt and I let her go with no kerfuffle, earning myself a kiss on the cheek. Marissa looked up at me with one of her usual grins, tinged with a touch of genuine warmth. “You know you don’t have to just use  _ your  _ device to learn about magic, right? We can always use mine if you want a quick lesson, and Logan is still willing to supplement your lessons from Meredith as long as you don’t bring her home.”

I cracked a small smile. “Thanks, I was probably about to do something stupid.”

 

“I figured. Shelly invited me over, but would you mind coming and hanging out with us? I know-”

 

“To keep an eye on me? I don’t mind.”

 

She seemed surprise, but she didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth. In any case, I ended up putting one of Shelly’s plainer bras on my head and wore it for the night before going to bed with both young women. My hands stayed in decent places, but I had to guide two pairs of hands back from indecent areas around me. I eventually just switched places with Shelly so that she was in the middle, so Marissa and I cuddled her to death and back. Waking up with three people in a queen size bed was something I’d never experienced before, but with Shelly in my arms, it was something I could get used to. I’m sure anyone would have preferred to be alone with their person of choice and I happened to be one of them, but it’s not like I was upset or anything.

 

I got a text from Mistress Meredith that I was to report to the PPD Training Room in about forty minutes from when I read it, so I didn’t wait for either of my lady friends to wake up and just headed on over. Meredith and Commissioner Bronson were both waiting for me when I got there, but the Commissioner only stayed long enough to chat with his wife in quiet whispers that I couldn’t make out, seemingly taking orders from her. It didn’t really matter to me, but when I saw Meredith’s patented psychotic smile playing on her lips, I had a bad feeling about the day ahead of me. We started with basic things, like analyzing the music I had sent her. 

 

We began with Montana and the VF stylings within that song. There was another room attached to the Training Room called the ‘Sound Lab’. The name was nowhere to be seen, but Meredith called it that, so that’s what it is to me. Inside the Sound Lab there was a lot of familiar equipment and panelling that made the place look similar to a recording studio, but then there was a mixture of Steampunk and Cyberpunk technology that was mouth-watering to say the least. Odd instruments that I had never seen before, including what appeared to be a flat fretboard attached to a metal ball. The board was attached to the rim of the hole in the ball, but the strings, instead of going inside, went around the ball and attached to the back of the fretboard, held in place by tiny grooves that also changed the pitch and tone of the note. Mistress let me get my hands on that and a few of the other instruments in the room before she started guiding my experience back to song analysis.

 

Before I’d gotten distracted, Meredith had me isolate the Vaux Faker from Montana, which was hella, extremely,  _ so much hardnesser _ than I thought it would be. Honestly, getting the underlying track out of the song was by no means easy like it had been for  _ SSS (Silver Satin Sands) _ , the song I had made with Shelly. No, it was damn near impossible for me to tell which frequencies held the Va Faxar notes and which were just Vaux Faker, which I didn’t get the full gist of the difference anyway. Mistress Meredith said that it basically broke down as Va Faxar being the root and Vaux Faker being the tree. If I had to say, then it would have to be like the difference between a typical spell and a cantrip, both of which are still magic. With Vaux Faxar, you needed a full incantation, a ‘Round’, as Meredith calls it. Meanwhile with Va Faxar, the base of the magic, you just need the emotion and a sound to go along with it. The ‘Cadance’ you make results in the spell, rather than a full song. I guess you could say that Va Faxar would be the notes of a song while Vaux Faker would be the song itself.

 

Getting back to the ‘interesting’ world of song analysis, it took four hours for Meredith to explain to me that I was looking for frequencies that topped or bottomed out of the human hearing-range, so that was… Nice, shall we say. I was plenty pissed with myself after I managed to crack that little secret since decoding the rest of the song was pretty easy, but I quickly learned that the lyrics I’d heard before were no longer present in the song. Meredith and I refined and played the track time and time again, the static that came from the process of ripping a beat out of a melody being a little hard to work with. However, once we cleaned it up and got the static and extra noise to go away, I heard the spell I’d accidentally made as it was truly meant to be sang/sung/vocalized. The voice was neither male nor female, and it sounded a bit like there were dozens of clones singing the same thing. It was a beautiful melody that I just listened to the first time I heard it, but Meredith smacked my head pretty fricking hard for zoning out when I should have been paying attention to the new lyrics.

 

_ Oh sun on high, how I sing for thee _

_ Thine music breathes wind through thickest trees _

 

_ Soliloquy I hold for thee _

_ Forging melody for posterity _

 

_ One more chance to sing along _

_ Nature calls for its next song _

 

_ Crescendo fortissimo largo _

 

_ Tidal wave for the Argos _

_ Final wave to the Pathos _

_ Committed sins against the Ethos _

_ Broken thought in the Logos _

 

_ Crescendo fortissimo largo _

 

_ Anaklusmos come for the Argos _

_ Maximus colludes with the Logos _

_ Say goodbye to the Ethos _

_ Peace will go with the Pathos _

 

_ Crescendo fortissimo largo  _

 

_ Crescendo fortissimo largo _

 

_ Oh sun on high, how I sing for thee _

_ Thine music breathes wind through thickest trees _

 

_ Soliloquy I hold for thee _

_ Forging melody for posterity _

 

_ One more chance to sing along _

_ Nature calls for its next song _

 

_ Crescendo, fortissimo, largo. _

 

Even after hearing it again and again, I couldn’t believe that it was the same song. Apparently, Meredith thought it was as beautiful as I had since she was tearing up as it ended the first time and was outright crying a little the second, both of which were odd when I saw the actions coming from the single most terrifying person I knew. Besides Dorset, of course. In any case, I had no idea what the spell did. According to Meredith, that was a good thing, and earned me a hug from the buxom dominatrix-that-had-missed-her-calling. I was shocked when she wrapped her arms around me and pressed herself against me in what was the most genuine and true show of emotion I’d ever seen from her. Then, while I was still surprised, she gave me a peck on the cheek and stroked my hair, the smile on her face finally reaching her eyes. It wasn’t even a full two seconds I spent staring into those galvanized waters before I lost myself in a thunderstorm, rain cascading around me. My mouth went dry and my knees went wobbly, another reaction occurring between those two points in a place I would’ve rather been unaffected. Lo’ and behold my luck, I gave Meredith a handle to hold onto.

 

“Another one,” she whispered to me, her eyes holding me in place just as well as her hand.

 

“ _ Gyeah, shure. _ ” I could barely feel my tongue, the muscle almost like it was made out of wet cotton and lead shot.

 

Meredith kissed me on the nose, making my face flush furiously, my ears hot beyond reason. “Good boy. Maybe I’ll give you a special treat if it’s a nice song~”

 

“I-I… I have a-” I started.

 

“Oh, I know Michelle. She’s my brother’s daughter.” Mistress got up from the soundboard and equipment we were working with and turned from me, checking her nails.

 

“Oh.”

 

“Hmm? Do you have a problem with that?”

 

“No ma’am, it’s just… A small world. A very small world.”

 

She smiled at me, her eyes no longer holding the same warmth. “It is, isn’t it? Shelly’s told her Auntie Merry so much about you.”

 

“I… Um... “

 

“It’s all good, I assure you. For someone who obviously doesn’t have any interest in sex, you sure are unfortunately endowed. Well, for your preferences, anyway.”

 

I didn’t know how to respond to that. “Well then.”

 

Meredith didn’t wink, but she did blink with intent, and I couldn’t discern whether that intent was to intimidate or to seduce. Either way, I was a little scared, a little turned on, and a lot fearful for my relationship with my favorite female of all time. “Don’t worry that pretty little head of yours for a second, Ladron, I’m not going to use my relationship with Seashell to spoil your fun. Now, if I think you might be using that little device of yours more often than you should be, such as last night…” 

 

The pointed look she gave me made me blanch, the heat from earlier leaving all at once, suffocating me. “I-”

 

“Give me your device and load up your next song. The reward is the same if there’s nothing to punish you over.”

 

I handed over the iPhone, only at that moment noticing that it was rose gold and had a thin black line on top of it, like a scanner of some sort. “I-”

 

She snatched it from me and glared at it, whispering under her breath. “Ah, do I know you?” Maxim asked, his voice coming clearly from the phone's speakers.

 

I closed my eyes and prayed to a God that I had a harder time then more than ever believing in, but nevertheless I sent one up to the fella upstairs and begged for a big one. While I realize how unfortunately I worded that, I needed my skin and bones to human properly, and I wasn’t very optimistic about my chances of being able to do that with the things I mentioned. Want to know why? Well, it’s because either Meredith was going to flay me alive, or Maxim was going to turn my bones into non-bones, and God was neither replying nor laughing at my pathetic attempt at self-salvation. I felt helpless in a moment that stretched on forever and ever, the eternity of anxiety rattling my core and my shell-less nuts. 

 

Then Meredith stuck her hand out at me, the screen blank.

 

I reclaimed my phone and she fell to the floor, which was the order of the day because I fell to my knees closeby. Grateful for a gracious bladder and impeccable control over my bowels, I carefully, ever so carefully, reached out to poke l Mistress’ shoulder. I poked her. She did not move. Ladron became very worried and I was becoming worried about Ladron worrying because he was me and I, he, but neither he nor I nor we were terribly happy about disassociating with ourself by accident. If it were done through purpose and intent, we’d be happy or ecstatic, perhaps, for the complete and utter separation we’d achieved. At the moment, me and my Ego were floating down, looking at myself as I knelt, staring at my hand. It was disconcerting to see myself in third person, but I can say that I was honestly surprised. I’d thought I was an ugly duckling that was never going to grow out of the duckling phase and I’d been fine with that, but after looking at myself from someone else’s perspective, I had to say that I didn’t look as atrocious as I’d thought. Maybe if shock and paranoia weren’t painted on my countenance, I’d have found myself to be a little less… well, not  _ striking _ , but… It was hard to say then, but I believe I almost found myself to be attractive enough to date Shelly and that was a surprise. 

 

For a few minutes, I was trapped outside of my body, and I may or may not have indulged myself a little with my out of body experience, but it’s not like anyone got hurt, nor did anyone know what I did. I won’t say what I did, but I will mention that Meredith’s black skirt and ash-grey blouse were getting dirty while she was on the floor. I’ll also mention that she looked pretty damn good in blue, but that’s neither here nor there. Shortly after I’d decided to stop playing I-Spy with myself, I found myself back in my body with my device in my hand, Maxim Gregorovich looking at me expectantly. 

 

“Hello?” he asked impatiently. “I haven’t got all day, Ladron.”

 

“... Um…”

 

“She’ll be fine. I’d insist that you slap her to test the spell, but that-” I smacked her rear and let my hand rest there. “What did you do? You did not go far.”

 

“I probably just started something that’s gonna get me hashtag MeToo’d by someone at some point, but for now I slapped her butt.”

 

“Ah. To lay a hand on a sleeping woman is-”

 

“Despicable, I know-”

 

Maxim barked out a laugh. “If only because they have no chance for a slap! Ah, how many fine  _ zhopa  _ I have felt in my day, consent not always asked for.” He added the last part like it didn’t matter, but I was pretty sure that it did.

 

I removed my hand, watching it carefully as I pulled away. “So that’s never gonna be talked about again.”

‘

“Oh, I’m going to lord this over you for the rest of your perverted life, you little cretin.”

 

“You practically-”

 

“But not literally. Slip a finger in her, I dare you,” Maxim prodded, chuckling merrily.

 

“I’ll stick a finger in you, buster. Why’d you knock her out?”

 

“Did you not find her to be within your darkest desire?”

 

My blood froze in my veins, but I played it as cool as I could. “I’m not into being beaten and degraded, or being treated like a slave slash puppy.”

“When did I say you were, Lad?” he answered, significantly better at the coolness game than I was.

 

“That’s not true, Maxim.”

 

“I’d rather say that it is. Maybe it’s something about the family, hmm?”

 

“ _ You can shut the fuck up. _ ” I seethed.

 

Gregorovich shrugged in the screen, looking all too pleased with himself. “Lad, I meant no offense to strike no nerve within you.”

 

“Sure seems like it.”

 

“You can believe as you like. You can take my present or you can leave it-”

 

“ _ People aren’t presents.  _ Guess you are just about as evil as everyone says.”

 

“And yet,  _ here we are _ .” His gaze was calm and collected, like an ambush predator waiting for the slightest mistake on my part to seize the opportunity. “Your darkest, most despised temptation and a locked room. Hours to do  _ anything you please _ .”

 

“I’m not  _ raping  _ Meredith.” 

 

“No, it would just be a bit of punishment for her crimes against you, no? For thinking herself above you, that she was  _ better than you _ . You know that our ‘sweet’ little Merry here would kill you sooner than kiss you, and she sees many reasons to kill you. Would it be so wrong-”

 

“Yeah, it’d be  _ so  _ wrong that I’m not going to do it. I might run that kink by Shelly someday, but not today, and not with Meredith. Besides, she’d probably kill me until I died to death of being unalived to a state of lifelessness.”

 

“Meredith or Michelle?”

 

“Yes, and on top of that, I get it, Maxim. It’s sick. Doesn’t mean that I like that I’m into it, and it doesn’t mean-”

 

“Oh, come now, Lad. Why else would a young man ask for three combat oriented spells? You were warned  _ time and time again _ that I was an evil man. I told you that I am not. Would you like to discuss this?”

 

“Yeah, actually, ‘cause I have a funny feeling that it pertains to me anyway.”

 

“It does, indeed. Do you know how Legends choose their Vessels, Ladron Gadai?”

 

“I don’t, so pretty please tell me before Meredith wakes up.”

 

“If you could rape her and get away with it, then I think she would be very hard to wake in your given timeframe. That being said, we Legends don’t necessarily just pick anyone that we’ve observed. No, in fact, after our lives have ended, there are a few events that I cannot reveal to you at this moment, but at the end of those events, we are given a choice: we may either carry on as Legends vicariously through our Vessels, turning them into our Vassals, or we may rest and let the world continue to turn on an axis of thorns.”

 

“That tells me almost literally nothing about how Leggybois choose vassinas.”

 

“Shut up, you  _ shut _ , er,  _ fool _ . Either one, feel free to choose.”

 

“You’re being awfully mean.”

 

“ _ Сын,  _ I’m a man who has killed more people than you have met. I am not always the most tactful, and you are being rather uncooperative.”

 

“Right. Mass murderer. I’m just gonna…” I started to hang up with Maxim’s watchful eye on me. Then I hung up. Except my finger didn’t touch the glass and the phone felt like it was glued to my hand. “I’m not allowed to hang up, am I?”

 

“When you can go, I’ll let you know,” Gregorovich replied easily. “For now, you sit. You listen. Clear?”

 

“Like a decent gem.” I wasn’t scared, I was just feeling irritable.

 

“See? Who do you fear more, myself, or your proclaimed ‘Mistress’?”

 

“ _ Mistress _ , duh.”

 

“Yet you would lay a hand on her?”

 

“I’a pimp-slap yo’ ass.”

 

“... That’s quite creative of you. Touch me in my realm and I shall invite unfathomable horrors unto your… How you Americans say,  _ gooch? _ ”

 

“That’s both gay and threatening. One matters a little less than the other, but both matter since I’ve already got everything I need from you. I don’t  _ want  _ your full power. I’ll be perfectly content with your spoonful-”

 

“Lad, are you saying that you intend on  _ abandoning _ , no,  _ shunning _ , my gifts?”

 

I smiled at him. “You said it yourself, Maxim; You’re a mass-murdering psychopath. You and I might be dark inside, but I’m a nice grey, and you’re a Blaq Russian.”

 

He smiled back. “Clever, but it was the end of a bull with no head and two tails. From start to finish, you were  _ spewing shit _ , ha! You are my kind of dark, Ladron. That’s the only reason I was  _ able  _ to choose you.”

 

That pinged something deep inside of me, right in my chest cavity. I wasn’t exactly sure where my heart was, but I could vaguely feel something next to it, aching fiercely. It might have been my most useful muscle or it could have been my lie detector not going off, its needle digging into the tender soft-tissue of my beating heart, dragging a straight line around it. “I really wish you were lying.”

 

“But you know for yourself that I am not, no?”:

 

“... Fink and Winnfield. Who-”

 

“Dorset was ‘blessed’ with one of my Grandfather’s own role-models in youth, a man by the name of Josef Mengele, a Kraut.”

 

“... Famous Nazi. Yeah, I know of him.”

 

Maxim chuckled. “Ah, how my Father told me tales of his screams! Josef was always such a bastard with his punishments, but taking his own medicine made him quite ill. Especially when my father exposed his stomach and staunched the bleeding.  _ That  _ was an interesting experiment.”

 

“I’m guessing you had a  _ fun _ childhood.”

 

“Made me an excellent field surgeon. Blood and bone were my expertise, but uniting the world-”

 

“Oh,  _ c’mon _ , you fricking  _ lunatic! _ You can’t pretend that you were still trying to good all along!”

 

Maxim smiled. “Have I ever lied to you, Ladron?”

 

“Pretty sure you’re doing it now,” I replied flatly.

 

He looked me in the eye and that was all it took to know that Maxim was being veratible as could be. “Hmm? Have you got something to say to me, Lad?”

 

Wisdom guided my tongue, placed there by fear’s quaking hand and encouraged by whispers of dread. “Sorry for the accusation, comrade.”

 

He nodded toward me. “I won’t make you accept this particular gift. But, if you don’t, she’ll still think you did. If you do  _ something _ …” Gregorovich’s sly, wolf-like grin. “Perhaps she’ll forget this all happened? Perhaps she’ll want  _ more _ .”

 

“... I either cheat on Shells with her psycho Aunt while she’s passed out, or I get the shaft and everyone thinks I’m a rapist. I doubt it’ll even go to court,” I murmured numblty, the weight of my choices in life settling nicely on the top of the  _ fucking SHIT-PILE _ I’d invited onto my shoulders. Life  **_hurt_ ** _. _

 

“Do something interesting and she likes you. Respect her and she hates you. Modern women, da?” Maxim cackled, the perfect Feminazi enemy all coalesced into a cishet-white-male with wurld dalmatian aspirations, or something of the sort.

 

I stared into his eyes, cold and mirthful as they were. I’d never noticed it before, but he took genuine joy in just about everything he did, whether it was wrong or right. To Maxim, he  _ did  _ try to save the world in his own way, and I didn’t even need to hear the majority, or even any, of his story to be painfully, achingly aware of that. Maxim Gregorovich had done just enough to plant the seed of doubt in my mind about him and he’d lead me straight into a trap, courtesy of my own stupid mistakes. The option was obvious to me and it was… To be completely and totally honest, I looked for a gun. I considered biting my tongue off and just choking on it. I kept a knife on me, and Marlene let me keep my pen knife on me since it wasn’t over three inches long, but…

 

How many people- No. How many  _ sane  _ people can say that they would rather kill themselves rather than kill someone else? That they would get stabbed for someone who’d bullied them and made it clear that the sacrifice wouldn’t be worth it outside of a pyrrhic, moral victory? That they would rather take action to cause themselves to die before…

 

I didn’t walk away proud, and I didn’t walk away with my tail between my legs. Leaving the Sound Lab with Meredith singing songs of praise for my compositions and adoration falling from her lips in cascading droplets, raining guilt into my bones, making my chest ache. I hadn’t- Well, I  _ had  _ earned it, that was fair enough, but I hadn’t earned it the way Meredith would’ve intended, and that still bothered me. Before you set me ablaze and make voodoo dolls of me, I still did something weird and creepy like a mother-fricker, but  _ I did  _ _ not _ _ have  _ _ sexual relations _ _ with that woman _ . I simply kissed her until we both reacted, and apparently that was good enough. I still wanted to puke, still hated myself, and was still considering suicide with a hale and hearty vengeance.

 

All in all, I considered it a productive day, and it wasn’t even over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we start taking turns. Turns of the turning varien


End file.
